Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE AND COMMERCE

Hire Purchase

Miss Burton: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that a furnishing stores, of which he has been informed, advertises hire-purchase terms for a dining suite complete; that no deposit is necessary the suite being delivered upon the first of 38 weekly payments of 10s.; that the price is stated to be the same whether cash or credit but that the public is confused as one is 49 guineas and one £19; and if he will therefore investigate the matter upon the evidence supplied to him by the hon. Member for Coventry, South.

The President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Peter Thorneycroft): I have examined the advertisement to which the hon. Member refers. It is confusing.
In fact the weekly payments of
10s. relates to a hire-purchase agreement for two years for which a deposit is necessary, and not to a credit sale agreement for 38 weeks for which no deposit is required, but on which the weekly payments would be much greater.

Miss Burton: While I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman agrees that this advertisement of Jay's Furnishing Stores is misleading, may I ask whether he feels able to say that he regards it as completely dishonest and an attempt to muddle the customer? Is he prepared to take steps to stop this abuse in hire-purchase trading?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I will content myself by saying that it is a thoroughly confusing advertisement; but the statute law does not provide for actions in the case of advertisements of that type. Of course, on the hire-purchase agreement

the purchaser would be shown the cash price, the hire-purchase price and the amount of each instalment.

Mr. Bottomley: Does the right hon. Gentleman contemplate taking action to prevent this undesirable practice?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I have not closed my mind against action to deal with advertisements but that would require legislation, which is not possible at this stage.

Miss Burton: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that some furniture retailers are quoting to the public cash prices which are falsified for the purpose of disguising the profit made through the sale of furniture on hire-purchase terms; and what steps he proposes to take to stop this abuse of his hire-purchase regulations by certain multiple retailers.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: I have seen statements that some furniture retailers inflate their cash prices to make their hire-purchase terms appear more attractive. People can compare the cash and hire-purchase prices charged by different traders and buy where they get the best value for their money. I do not propose to control prices, and no question of contravention of the Hire-Purchase Control Orders arises.

Miss Burton: Is the President aware that I am glad that he is learning about this scandal? May I ask him if he is also aware that I am not asking him to control prices? Further, is he aware that a lecture was given recently by Mr. James Beattie to the Council of Industrial Design—and we subsidise the Council of Industrial Design—to the effect that what the Question asserts is true, and Mr. Beattie himself said that he has seen displayed on articles hire-purchase terms that bear no relation to the cash price? Does the right hon. Gentleman not think that he should stop this practice, because we have given him all the examples we can—three a week?

Mr. Thorneycroft: We cannot really control the cash price which people quote, except by price control, but if they inflate their cash prices, they will be beaten by their competitors.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the great growth


of this practice is causing a great deal of anxiety to reputable traders, who dislike it as much as does anybody else?

Mr. Albu: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the very large retail organisation which controls a very large part of the trade is bringing pressure to bear on suppliers not to supply independent retail traders who display fair cash prices?

Visitors from Overseas

Mr. Shepherd: asked the President of the Board of Trade the total number of visitors to the United Kingdom in the current period, including visitors from Commonwealth and Colonial countries; and the total estimated revenue from this source.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: I would refer my hon. Friend to the Answer which I gave on 3rd November to my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale (Sir I. Fraser). The total estimated revenue for April to September this year is £78 million.

Mr. Rankin: Can the Minister supplement that Answer by stating the total amount of currency taken out of the country by people who spent their holidays abroad?

Mr. Thorneycroft: Not for 1955, but for 1954 the best estimate I can make is that we spent £6 million more than overseas visitors spent when coming to this Country.

Australia and New Zealand (Import Cuts)

Mr. Edelman: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether his attention has been drawn to the effect of the Australian and New Zealand imports cuts on the sale of British motor cars; and what representations he has made to the authorities concerned.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: Yes, Sir; I regret that Australia and New Zealand have had to impose these cuts on their imports from all sources, but they were unavoidable and it would not be appropriate to make representations against the measures taken. I hope that our motor car manufacturers will be successful in making good the loss by exports to other countries.

Mr. Edelman: Is the President of the Board of Trade aware that the motor industry is now trapped between these restrictions abroad and the Chancellor's impositions at home? In view of the anxiety about employment in Coventry, will not the right hon. Gentleman take further action to open the channels of trade?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I think that the action taken by Australia and New Zealand in an all-round cut in imports was, unfortunately, necessary, not only in their own interests, but in those of the sterling area as a whole. I understand that the motor industry is successfully filling the gap by expanding exports to other markets.

Mr. Shepherd: Is it true that Australia has made a cut all round? Has she cut dollar imports as well?

Mr. Thorneycroft: Australia deals with dollar imports rather separately and more restrictively.

U.S. Contracts (British Tenders)

Mr. Fernyhough: asked the President of the Board of Trade what reply was received from the State Department to the written representations made by Sir Robert Scott, the British Minister in Washington, about the tenders for the Chief Joseph Dam.

Mr. Bottomley: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he has any further statement to make about the rejection by the United States Government of a lowest tender for an electrical undertaking submitted by a United Kingdom firm.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: The State Department defended the action taken on the ground that the contract was to be carried out in the United States in an area of substantial unemployment. The reply also stated that the decision did not represent a departure from the principles laid down in the President's executive order of December, 1954, or from the declared objectives of the United States Government to pursue a liberal foreign trade policy. I do not consider that any useful purpose would be served by replying further to the United States note.

Mr. Fernyhough: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that since the tender was rejected, the United States has


increased the import duties on British bicycles and has recently increased the duty also on underground pipes? Does this not make nonsense of America's promise to liberalise trade, and is it not making greater nonsense of the Chancellor's policy of "Trade, not aid"?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I have made quite clear what my view is about these various actions by the United States. Indeed, they have come under considerable criticism from newspapers in their own country.

Mr. Bottomley: Is the President of the Board of Trade in a position to make any statement about reports that the British Embassy has made further representations about the rejection of another lowest tender by the same firm as quoted for the Chief Joseph Dam?

Mr. Thorneycroft: Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will put that question down.

Film Industry (Survey)

Mr. Swingler: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will request the Cinematograph Films Council to carry out a national survey of the British film industry's resources, with a view to advising him on future prospects of raising the quotas for British films and of saving dollars on imports.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: The possibility of a survey of the British film industry is under consideration at the present time in view of the approaching expiry of the British film quota legislation.

Mr. Swingler: While thanking the Minister for that reply, which is welcome in view of his previous negative Answers, may I ask him if he can possibly speed up this inquiry in view of the continuing decline in the physical assets of the British film industry? Is it not important that this survey should take place as quickly as possible, so that the right hon. Gentleman can decide on the action to arrest the decline?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I think it is good to realise that we happen to be at one on this particular issue for once. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the necessary inquiry, if it is held, will be held in good time before the quota arrangement runs out.

Home Flax Scheme (Winding-up)

Mr. G. Jeger: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether, in view of the necessity to conserve foreign currency, he will reconsider the decision to close down the Government flax processing mills.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: No, Sir. I am satisfied that in the interests of economy the Home Flax Scheme ought to be wound up.

Mr. Jeger: Is the Minister aware that this industry employs about 10,000 workers and has a large amount of capital invested in it? Has he received a memorandum from the Flax Spinners' and Manufacturers' Association, which sets out many logical reasons why this industry, one-third of which contributes to our export trade, should be continued?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I have considered a very large number of representations about this matter, and I announced the winding-up of this scheme more than a year ago. It was losing £300 per ton, and I am quite certain that, in the interests of public economy, it ought to be closed.

Commander Scott-Miller: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the flax factory at Flitcham in Norfolk, which is the pioneer factory and the one which carries all the technical staff of this industry, is probably, standing on its own, quite an economic proposition? Will my right hon. Friend reconsider the matter in regard to that particular factory?

Mr. Thorneycroft: This matter was gone into in very great detail. I shall be happy to hear anything which my hon. and gallant Friend wishes to say to me, but this scheme as a whole was losing very considerable sums of public money.

Mr. Jeger: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise this matter on the Motion for the Adjournment at the earliest opportunity.

Indian Industries Fair, New Delhi (British Exhibits)

Mr. Swingler: asked the President of the Board of Trade what action he is taking to ensure an adequate exhibition of exportable British goods at the industrial fair now in progress in New Delhi.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: Exhibiting goods in overseas trade fairs is a matter for individual firms and not the Government. The Board of Trade drew the attention of industry to the Indian Industries Fair by a variety of means from last November onwards, and a number of British firms are exhibiting.

Mr. Swingler: Is the Minister aware that a number of reputable people in Delhi have described the British part of the exhibition as the shoddiest part of the fair, and that, in the early reports in papers like the "Hindustan Times," there was scarcely any mention of the British part of the exhibition at all, while there was considerable mention of the American, Chinese and Soviet Union exhibits? Is not that deplorable in a country of the Commonwealth, and should not the President of the Board of Trade take some responsibility for promoting exports through these means?

Mr. Thorneycroft: These questions about fairs are always difficult matters, but I am bound to say that I think it is for the industrialists to judge what they wish to exhibit. The industrialist's object is not necessarily national prestige but to sell his goods, and that is why he sends them there. I do not think that to repeat every criticism of British goods helps our export trade.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: In spite of what my right hon. Friends says, is he aware that, while the cold war conditions exist, he cannot really wholly neglect the element of national prestige?

Mr. Thorneycroft: If I may say so, that is quite a different, though important, point. If we are, as a matter of foreign policy and national prestige, to have national exhibits, that is quite a different question from the one with which we are dealing here.

Mr. Bottomley: While accepting the President's view that, from the strictly commercial point of view, the British businessman does not need to exhibit there, surely he will bear in mind the fact that Asia is a developing part of the world and that, on the long-term view, we ought to develop our trade, in the interests of the country?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I am concerned with answering on the commercial aspect, which is the responsibility of my Department.

Cotton Fabrics (Ironing)

Miss Burton: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware of the exaggerated claims which are being made that flat-finish cotton fabrics require no ironing; and what steps he proposes to take under Section 2 (1) (d) reference Section 3 (1) (a) (b) of the Merchandise Marks Acts to ensure that these claims are stopped.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: I am aware of the claim that certain cotton fabrics do not require ironing. I have no evidence that this claim is unjustified, but if the hon. Member will let me have any such evidence, I shall be glad to consider it.

Miss Burton: I shall be delighted to do so, but may I ask the right hon. Gentleman, as a preliminary, whether his office has called his attention to a statement made by the President of the Textile Finishing Trades Association in "Men's Wear" of 22nd October that there is a tendency nowadays to exaggerate claims for particular fabrics? What is the use of having a Merchandise Marks Act, which allows action to be taken in the case of false claims, if the right hon. Gentleman has not the slightest intention of using it?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I have no evidence that these claims are unjustified. When we find that the cotton industry, which is fighting considerable odds, is developing new forms of fabrics and processing, it deserves all the support it can get.

Overseas Trade Exhibitions

Mr. Bottomley: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will consider appointing a committee to go into the whole question of overseas trade exhibitions.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: Such a committee already exists. The Exhibitions Advisory Committee was appointed in 1949, and is widely representative of industry and commerce. The general question of our policy regarding overseas trade exhibitions has been thoroughly considered by them in the last twelve months, and the Government's current practice in


this matter, as recently set out in the "Board of Trade Journal," takes full account of the Committee's advice.

Mr. Bottomley: Is it not a fact that this Advisory Council arose out of the 1946 Ramsden Committee, and that things have changed since then, so that the matter ought to be looked at again? As we have heard, in reply to a recent Question, something about an exhibition at New Delhi, should there not be consultation with the Foreign Office to see whether exhibitions cannot be dealt with nationally, and, for that reason, will not a new committee be required?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I think we should never take up an inflexible attitude about matters as complicated as trade fairs. This is a very representative Advisory Committee, with the trade unions and all walks of life in industry represented, and I am bound to say that on the commercial side I consider that I am well advised to take their advice in these matters.

Squadron Leader Cooper: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind the fact that trade fairs are not the only answer to our trade problems, but that we need first-class salesmen, backed up by an efficient service at home?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I agree with my hon. and gallant Friend, and I recognise that that view is very strongly held in British industrial circles today.

Anglo-Polish Trade Agreement

Mr. Osborne: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he is satisfied so far with the results of the Anglo-Polish Trade Agreement of November, 1954; how much trade has resulted from it; and to what extent the credit facilities provided have been used.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: No, Sir. A number of the Polish quotas remain unfulfilled. We have expressed our dissatisfaction to the Polish authorities and are pressing them to carry out their part of the Agreement. As regards the last part of the Question, exporters have availed themselves of the facilities provided by the Export Credits Guarantee Department to the extent of about one-fifth of our total exports to Poland.

Mr. Osborne: May I ask my right hon. Friend if I am to understand from his Answer that the fault is on the Polish

side and not on the British exporters' side? Is there any hope of extending credit facilities to Poland similar to those afforded by Western Germany, France, Austria and other Western Powers in the past?

Mr. Thorneycroft: The fault is certainly on the Polish side, in so far as their quotas remain unfulfilled. In the Export Credits Guarantee Department, we are covering in the normal way, and as far as I know there is no discrimination here.

Animal Feeding Stuffs (Importation)

Mr. Crouch: asked the President of the Board of Trade the policy of Her Majesty's Government in regard to the import of agricultural raw materials.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: If, as I understand, my hon. Friend has animal feeding-stuffs in mind, the majority of these may be imported without restriction from all sources.

Mr. Crouch: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is a certain amount of apprehension among agriculturists, in view of the statement made by the Minister of Agriculture that we want to increase our livestock and that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that we must keep an eye on the amount of coarse grains imported? If we want an expanding livestock industry, we must have ample supplies of coarse grains.

Mr. Thorneycroft: We believe that it is in the national interest to have these raw material feeding stuffs available from all sources in such a way that we are likely to buy them in the cheapest market.

Mr. T. Williams: Is there no intention at all of restricting private importers from importing as much coarse grains as they wish?

Mr. Thorneycroft: We certainly do not want to stand between farmers and the import of their necessary raw materials.

Mr. Williams: Then how is it that Ministers are constantly stating that we must reduce the imports of coarse grains?

Mr. Thorneycroft: It is not the intention of the Government to try to solve our current economic difficulties by the reimposition of import restrictions in matters of this kind.

Mr. Williams: What is the dollar expenditure?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I cannot give that figure without notice.

Exports to Canada

Mr. Shepherd: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that our exports to Canada over the last three years have been roughly half the value of our imports; what steps he is taking to stimulate our sales to Canada; and if he is satisfied that he has made it clear to the Canadian Government that the continuity of trade at its present level must depend upon an effort on their part to encourage British imports by all means at their disposal.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: Yes, Sir. The principal obstacle to exports in recent months has been a condition of inflation in the home market, and a variety of steps have now been taken, as the House knows, to remedy the situation. I can say with confidence that the Canadian Government recognise the importance to Canada of the United Kingdom's efforts to increase its dollar exports.

Monopolies Commission (Pneumatic Tyres)

Mr. Holt: asked the President of the Board of Trade when he expects to receive the Report of the Monopolies Commission on the supply of pneumatic tyres.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: I have already received this Report and I expect to lay it before Parliament early next month.

Mr. Holt: Has the President of the Board of Trade seen newspaper reports that he is under pressure to cut out various parts of this Report? Will he give an assurance that he will not cut out anything on the ground of its possibly being against the interests of the tyre manufacturers?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I have seen those reports, and I have had representations made to me by the tyre manufacturers asking me to excise certain parts of the Report. What I have to consider is whether it is necessary to excise those parts on grounds of national interest. The statute requires me to consider that, and that I will certainly consider.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL FINANCE

Local Authority Loans (Interest Rates)

Mr. Moss: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware of the difficulties caused to local authorities by repeated changes in the rates charged by the Public Works Loan Board for the money lent to local authorities; what steps he is proposing to meet these difficulties; and whether he will give an assurance that such uncertainty will be avoided in future so that local finances may have reasonable stability.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Henry Brooke): I have nothing to add to my right hon. Friend's Budget statement on 26th October, in which he stated that day-to-day fluctuations will be avoided, but that the Treasury will continue to adjust local loans rates in either direction as may be required to keep them in line with future changes in the level of the relevant rates in the market.

Mr. Moss: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that his right hon. Friend's too frequent tinkering with the Bank Rate and the rate of interest on loans to local authorities has caused confusion and caused them to abandon major schemes? Will he give an undertaking that if he must apply this Keynesian technique, he will do so in such a way that a reasonable period of time is given for the operation of the Bank Rate at a certain level?

Mr. Brooke: I certainly agree that day-by-day fluctuations, as my right hon. Friend said, are undesirable, but the general principle under which these rates must fluctuate with changes in market rates was stated in the House by Sir Stafford Cripps.

Mr. Woodburn: Is the Financial Secretary aware that local authorities are already controlled by the Government in that they need permission for all their activities? Why is it necessary to penalise them by making them pay these extra charges and interest when they are already under control? Would the right hon. Gentleman further state who gets the
money which local authorities pay in the extra charges? Who benefits when the local authorities part with the money? It goes somewhere.

Mr. Brooke: There is no penalising of the local authorities. The right hon. Member for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) is asking that the local authorities should be put in a privileged position and alone be insulated from changes in money rates.

Customs Facilities, London Airport

Mr. Shepherd: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if his attention has been called to the delay in the clearance of air freight at London Airport occasioned by the refusal of the Customs to operate at night and over weekends; and what steps he is taking to enable the airlines to deal expeditiously with freight.

Mr. H. Brooke: I am not aware of any delay in the clearance of freight at London Airport attributable to the lack of Customs facilities. Customs procedures have already been adapted to facilitate the clearance of air freight, and officers are available at all times to deal with really urgent traffic.

Mr. Shepherd: Does my right hon. Friend realise that that statement is at variance with that expressed by British European Airways? Will he make further inquiries?

Mr. Brooke: I made extensive inquiries before answering this Question, but if my hon. Friend can give me any particular case of alleged delay, I will look into it. However, my information is that, in general, people using the airport are very satisfied.

Mr. Beswick: Is the Financial Secretary also aware of allegations that there is greater delay in clearing freight for the British Corporation than for the American concerns for certain stated reasons, and that there are a number of known cases in which long-term freight contracts have been moved from the Corporation to American concerns, simply because they are cleared through the Customs more quickly?

Mr. Brooke: I cannot believe that there is anything in the allegation, but I will certainly examine any information which the hon. Member cares to send to me.

Credit Policy (Small Firms)

Mr. Gresham Cooke: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that small firms approaching

finance corporations for fresh industrial capital are finding increasing difficulties placed in their way following the instructions given by the Treasury in relation to the current credit squeeze; and whether, in view of the fact that this is resulting in the abandonment of a number of promising projects of value to this country's industrial future, he will review the situation and take remedial action at an early date.

The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Sir Edward Boyle): The policy of the Government is directed to slowing down the tempo of investment which is not of the greatest national urgency. My right hon. Friend is aware that in consequence some useful projects may have to be postponed, but regrets that this is unavoidable in present circumstances.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: Is my hon. Friend aware that many small companies use hire-purchase finance companies to enable them to buy plant and machinery? I have in mind an instance of a purchaser of a diesel tug. Is he also satisfied that the Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation is sufficiently financed to meet the needs of small companies?

Sir E. Boyle: I made a full statement on the whole of this subject in an Adjournment debate on 28th July in response to the hon. Member for Wednesbury (Mr. S. N. Evans), and I have nothing to add to what I then said.

Mr. T. Williams: Is the Economic Secretary aware that agriculture, from which his hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Gresham Cooke) wants to take £10 million, is also having difficulty with the credit squeeze?

Sir E. Boyle: My right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture recently made a public speech about this in which he explained the position quite clearly.

Mr. Shinwell: Is the Economic Secretary aware that this policy will lead to the squeezing out of many small firms? Is that now the avowed policy of the Tory Party?

Sir E. Boyle: Again, I would advise the right hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) to look at what I said on 28th July. We debated this matter at some length on that day.

Income Tax (School Fees)

Sir I. Fraser: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer to give an estimate of the cost of allowing tuition fees at independent schools and colleges to rank for Income Tax relief.

Mr. H. Brooke: About £10 to £12 million a year.

Sir I. Fraser: Will my right hon. Friend represent to the Chancellor the very great advantage to the nation of facilitating education of this kind, and also the equity and fairness of helping those who try to help themselves?

Mr. Brooke: This is a matter to which my right hon. Friend has promised that he would give consideration, but there is nothing that I can add to that today.

Miss Bacon: Is the Financial Secretary aware that the amount involved is insignificant compared with the scandal of perpetuating a class system of education at the expense of the Exchequer?

Mr. Brooke: It is a very good thing that those parents who wish to make sacrifices for their children's schooling should be enabled so to do.

Industrial Output (Labour Cost)

Captain Pilkington: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how the labour cost per unit of output today compares with that of five years ago.

Sir E. Boyle: Between 1950 and 1954 labour costs per unit of industrial output increased by 23 per cent., and the evidence available indicates that they have continued to rise during this year.

Captain Pilkington: Can my hon. Friend say what are the main reasons why this has come about, and how badly it affects our export position?

Sir E. Boyle: I shall not give a short answer to that today, because this is really a subject which we could consider more profitably at length in a debate.

Mr. Bottomley: Is not one of the causes the fact that the £ today is worth only 17s. 3d. compared with when the Conservatives took office?

Sir E. Boyle: The real standard of living for the wage earners has increased under the present Government, whereas,

as the right hon. Gentleman knows, it fell during the last four years of the Labour Government.

Mr. Warbey: Does not the Economic Secretary agree that the figure which he has given is based on completely "phoney" statistics which do not take into account the increases in the general price level in the period in question? Will he give the corrected figure based on the value of the output and not merely on the quantity?

Sir E. Boyle: I have no doubt that the official figures on which this answer is based are much more accurate than any statistics which the hon. Member himself has.

Dock Strike

Captain Pilkington: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he can now give an estimate of the injury done to the country by the dock strike.

Sir E. Boyle: I cannot put this into figures. The setback to our trade came at an unfortunate time, though great efforts have been made to reduce the damage to a minimum.

Captain Pilkington: Would it not be a good thing if somebody were to estimate the damage which such a strike does, so that we can take necessary action?

Sir E. Boyle: These are difficult things to estimate precisely, but we should remember, amongst other things, that ours is not the only country where there have been strikes.

Mr. Woodburn: Can the hon. Gentleman offer any more reliable statistics as to how far the manipulations of the money changers in this and other countries have affected the value of the £?

Sir E. Boyle: That is an absolutely different point, and quite irrelevant to this Question.

Smuggling, Northern Ireland (Prevention)

Mr. Hyde: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the extent of the existing liaison between Customs preventive officers and officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary for the purpose of the prevention and detection of smuggling offences in Northern Ireland.

Mr. H. Brooke: The Customs and the police have separate and distinct responsibilities on the Border. The two services work in close co-operation when necessary.

Customs Examination (Passengers' Baggage)

Mr. Hyde: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will arrange for the baggage of passengers travelling to and arriving from abroad to be examined by Customs officers on international boat trains while the trains are in transit between London and the ports of departure and arrival.

Mr. H. Brooke: Suggestions on these lines have previously been examined by the Customs and railway authorities and others concerned with passenger traffic. But the conclusion which has on each occasion been reached is that, in the circumstances existing in this country, it would not be consistent with the convenience of passengers, with economy in staff, or with effective Customs control.

Mr. Hyde: Is my right hon. Friend aware that this practice works very well on the Continent, and on the trains between Belfast and Dublin? In view of the undoubted convenience to passengers which would result, will he not reconsider this matter?

Mr. Brooke: I can assure my hon. Friend that it has been most carefully considered. The train journey between the Channel ports and London is certainly shorter than the corresponding journeys on the other side of the Channel, and also the trains tend to be crowded.

National Land Fund

Mr. K. Robinson: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if his attention has been drawn to the account 1954–55 of the National Land Fund, which shows that the only payment made was £2,500 for a set of banners associated with Sir Francis Drake; and if he is now in a position to make a statement about the future use of the Fund, which has now reached nearly £58 million.

Mr. H. Brooke: The Answer to the first part of the Question is "Yes, Sir"; and to the second part "No, Sir."

Mr. Robinson: Is the Financial Secretary aware that, in the sad history of this Fund—which was set up for the most admirable purposes—last year was the most pathetic year of all? Is he further aware that this consideration by the Government has been going on for nearly a year, and can he say when his right hon. Friend will be able to make a statement?

Mr. Brooke: I quite agree that the size of the Fund has proved to be excessive in relation to its statutory purpose. I cannot say how soon my right hon. Friend will be able to make a statement.

Mr. Shinwell: Could we be enlightened as to the association of Sir Francis Drake with the Land Fund?

Mr. Blenkinsop: Will not the Financial Secretary take account of the strong feeling there is, on both sides of the House, that this Fund should be used, as originally intended, to help to establish national parks?

Mr. Brooke: In answer to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell), eight sixteenth century banners, traditionally associated with Sir Francis Drake and the "Golden Hind," were accepted in satisfaction of death duties. The answer to the hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, East (Mr. Blenkinsop) is that it is quite true that, when this Fund was first introduced, the right hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Dalton) suggested that it might be useful when national parks legislation came along, but when that legislation did come along, the Labour Government did not finance it by the use of this Fund.

Post-war Credits

Mr. Hoy: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what recent representations he has received urging the payment of interest on post-war credits; and his reply.

Mr. H. Brooke: I would refer the hon. Member to the Answers given to my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, Central (Sir F. Medlicott) on 23rd June, to the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) on 3rd November, and to the hon. Member for Feltham (Mr. Hunter) on 8th November. The matter has been raised with my right hon. Friend occasionally by other hon. Members in correspondence.

Mr. Hoy: But is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that during the General Election, the Secretary of State for Scotland, amongst others, gave a specific pledge that he would raise this matter with the Chancellor? We should like to know whether or not that has been done.

Mr. Brooke: Three Questions, at least, have been answered in this House since then, and, in reply, the Chancellor and I have pointed out that to pay interest on post-war credits at 2½ cent. would cost £131½ million. At 3½ per cent. the cost would be £19 million. I apologise to the House for having said, the other day, on the spur of the moment, that the cost would be £16 million or £17 million. The position remains, and I think this is supported by most hon. Members, that if the additional money were available it would be better to use it to pay out postwar credits more quickly.

Old-Age Pensioners (Tobacco Tokens)

Mr. Hunter: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will issue cash vouchers in lieu of tobacco vouchers, to old-age pensioners who do not smoke.

Mr. H. Brooke: No, Sir. The sole purpose of the tobacco token scheme is to relieve old-age pensioners of some part of the post-war increases in Tobacco Duty, and for that reason it would not be appropriate to extend the scheme to non-smokers.

Mr. Hunter: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that not all old people—ladies especially—smoke and that those who have a sweet tooth cannot afford to eat sweets at the present prices? Will he please ask the Chancellor to consider the matter again? The amount involved would be very small.

Mr. Brooke: This matter has been raised in the past. We are simply continuing the action that was taken by the hon. Gentleman's own party, when the Tobacco Duty was raised and it was felt desirable to protect old-age pensioners against some part of the increase in the duty.

Mr. Thornton-Kemsley: Would my right hon. Friend agree that, human nature being what it is, the undoubted abuses of this scheme can only be

checked by some such system as is proposed, or by withdrawal of the privilege?

Mr. Brooke: I should not like to dog-matise about human nature, but I am glad to say that the abuses of this scheme are not as extensive as, perhaps, my hon. Friend has alleged.

Imported Theatrical Costumes, Northern Ireland

Mr. Hyde: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will exempt amateur operatic and dramatic societies in Northern Ireland from the payment of Purchase Tax and Customs duties in respect of the temporary importation of theatrical costumes and other stage properties from the Irish Republic.

Mr. H. Brooke: The exemption suggested by my hon. Friend would unfairly discriminate against the theatrical costumiers in the United Kingdom, who have to pay Purchase Tax and, where appropriate, Customs duty on the costumes and properties which they let out on hire.

Mr. Hyde: Would my right hon. Friend accept an assurance from me that these properties and costumes are imported not to portray stage Irishmen but for the advancement of culture and dramatic art in Northern Ireland?

Mr. Brooke: I feel sure that that is so, and we want to help in every way we can in advancing the culture of Northern Ireland, but were my hon. Friend's suggestion to be adopted, it would really create an anomaly.

Mr. Hyde: Can the Financial Secretary not accept something in the nature of a bond or guarantee for the return of the properties after use?

Mr. Brooke: I will naturally examine any proposal which my hon. Friend makes, but I do not think that it will be possible to work it.

Gold (Price)

Mr. Grimond: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what conversations he has had with the United States Government over the possibility of a higher price for gold; and with what result.

Sir E. Boyle: My right hon. Friend stated the view of Her Majesty's Government on this question in his speech to


the Annual Meeting of the International Monetary Fund at Istanbul, in which he said:
Provided that we choose the right moment, an increase in the value of existing gold reserves would make it easier for the world to ensure that temporary balance of payments fluctuations are dealt with without recourse to restrictive measures.
In the same discussion, the United States Government opposed an increase in the price of gold as being inflationary in character.

Mr. Grimond: May we take it from that reply that it is Government policy to press for an increase in the price of gold, presumably in the interests of the sterling area and the balance of payments; and as the United States of America are the main people concerned, should not this matter be taken up directly with them?

Sir E. Boyle: When the hon. Member reads my Answer, I think that he will be satisfied with the line which the Chancellor took. I will gladly send the hon. Member a copy of the whole speech if he would like to see it. On the second point, it is important to remember that an increase in the United States monetary price of gold can only be effected by a decision of the United States itself, but we have made our position quite clear.

Pensions (Increase) Acts (Review)

Dr. King: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he has completed his review of the hardships caused to retired civil servants, local government staff, and teachers, by the rise in the cost of living; and whether he will now introduce a Pensions (Increase) Bill to benefit those whose fixed pensions have steadily declined in value.

Mr. H. Brooke: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave on 27th October to the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas).

Dr. King: Is the Minister aware that most of the very old pensioners in these groups got nothing under the 1952 Act, and that their last increase was given by the 1947 Act, since when the cost of living has increased by 50 per cent.? In view of the sympathy expressed by both sides of the House—and by the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself last June—does the right hon. Gentleman not think that it is about time something was done for these deserving people?

Mr. Brooke: I should like to repeat my statement of 27th October, that the Government are undertaking a review of these matters and will announce their conclusions in due course.

Dame Irene Ward: As it is extremely difficult to get figures, will my right hon. Friend circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT what it would cost to bring up the pensions of all the pensioners covered by the Pensions (Increase) Acts to the figure of the pension now being paid as from 1st January, 1955? Further, if the figures are not available, how is my right hon. Friend able to consider a fresh Pensions (Increase) Bill? I think that there is something very odd about it all.

Mr. Brooke: If I remember correctly, the answer to my hon. Friend's question is between £20 and £25 million a year. If she wishes to have a more exact figure, perhaps she would put a Question down, but I think it would be more helpful if those of us who are working on these complicated subjects were given the opportunity of examining the figures further rather than have to work out additional figures for the House.

Dame Irene Ward: On a point of order. As the Minister of Education told one of my hon. Friends last week that the figures in relation to teachers were not available, how is it the Treasury were able to produce the figures?

Mr. Speaker: That is not a point of order.

British Petroleum Company

Mr. Grimond: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will now sell the Government holding in the British Petroleum Company.

Sir E. Boyle: No, Sir.

Mr. Grimond: If the Government intend to retain their holding, will the right hon. Gentleman reconsider the position of their directors, who represent the majority holding in the company, and who, I understand, do not take part in the ordinary decisions of the company, with resultant embarrassment caused to the Government when a dividend decision such as that of the week before last is taken? Should these directors not take a full share in such decisions?

Sir E. Boyle: I have nothing to add to what my right hon. Friend said to the hon. Member on 1st March, 1955—that it has riot been our practice to interfere with the commercial management of the company.

Mr. Beswick: Is the hon. Member aware that everyone will applaud his decision not to undo the good work done by the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) as far back as 1911 in putting Government money into this concern; but is it not a fact that in modern conditions it is essential that we should take a more positive part in the direction of this company?

Sir E. Boyle: I cannot add to what I have just said.

Mr. Osborne: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what consultations the British Government directors of the British Petroleum Company had with him on dividend policy, prior to that company substantially increasing its interim dividend the day after his supplementary Budget.

Sir E. Boyle: I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply by my right hon. Friend the then Economic Secretary to the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Beswick) on 27th November, 1952.

Mr. Osborne: Does not my hon. Friend agree that it was most unfortunate timing to increase this dividend the day after the Chancellor of the Exchequer made an appeal for restraint? Secondly, what is the use of having Government directors in this company if they perform no function?

Sir E. Boyle: I have made it quite plain, in my earlier Answer to the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond), that the Government do not take an active part in these decisions. In answer to the first part of my hon. Friend's question, I would remind him of what the chairman of the company announced in December, 1954, namely, the company's intention in future to make any interim dividend payment larger in relation to the expected total payment than has been the case in the exceptional circumstances of recent years. I suggest that in the light of this statement we should suspend judgment until the total distribution over the year is made.

Mr. Osborne: In view of the fact that the Chancellor made his appeal only the day before the announcement, was it not most unfortunate timing?

Sir E. Boyle: I have answered that point and I have nothing more to say.

Mr. H. Morrison: Will the Economic Secretary answer the latter point in his hon. Friend's question—the part which the Government directors play? Is it the case that the Government directors are not supposed to take part in the commercial and financial affairs of the undertaking? If so, does not that reduce their appointment to something in the nature of a sinecure—something in the nature of giving them jobs and substantial salaries without responsibility?

Sir E. Boyle: The arrangements have been exactly the same ever since 26th March, 1929, which is a very long time ago. I would make two comments to the right hon. Gentleman. First, as my right hon. Friend said on 1st March, 1955, it has not been our practice to interfere with the commercial management of the company. Secondly, as my predecessor said, on 27th November, 1952:
I regret that I cannot disclose information about communications which pass between Her Majesty's Government and their representatives."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th November, 1952; Vol. 508, c. 610.]
I stand by that.

Mr. Morrison: The hon. Member still has not answered the question. Never mind how long the arrangement has lasted. Is it understood, as between the Government and the Government directors, that they do not take an active part in the commercial and financial operations of the company? If it is so, then are not these appointments in the nature of sinecures, and objectionable?

Sir E. Boyle: I think that I have made the position perfectly clear to the House, and I have nothing to add to what I said.

Mr. Morrison: I am entitled to an answer to the Question. Why is the hon. Gentleman so evasive? Is it understood that they have active commercial and financial duties or not? If not, are not the appointments in the nature of sinecures for material award?

Sir E. Boyle: I have told the House many times that the position has been exactly the same since 1929, and I have nothing to add to that.

Mr. Collins: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he is aware that the interim dividend recently announced by British Petroleum, a company in which Her Majesty's Government has a controlling interest, was eight times as much as the previous interim dividend; and whether, in view of the inflationary nature of such increases, he will reconsider the Government's policy not normally to interfere with the commercial operations of this company.

Sir E. Boyle: The answer to the first part of the Question is "Yes, Sir"; and to the second part, "No, Sir."

Mr. Collins: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that this tremendous dividend—quite unprecedented since 1929—was declared the day after the Chancellor made his Budget Statement, that it made nonsense of his appeal for dividend restraint, and, in the eyes of the workers, is a positive incitement to wage demands? Will the Government therefore reconsider their policy in regard to a company in which they own the majority interest?

Sir E. Boyle: I can only repeat what I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne) just now, that in the light of the statement made at the meeting of the company in December, 1954, we should suspend judgment until the total distribution for this year is known.

Purchase Tax

Mr. Janner: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that teachers who cut big sheets of school paper into smaller sheets for their pupils are breaking Purchase Tax rules and have been warned that if they cut up sheets of more than 229½ square inches education committees become liable for tax on the smaller sheets; and whether he will end this tax anomaly.

Mr. H. Brooke: The position is governed by the general provisions of the law relating to processing, which are necessary for the effective collection of the tax. I have no reason to believe that they cause any serious embarrassment to the educational authorities concerned.

Mr. Janner: Does that mean that the hon. Member is not prepared to consider the proposal put before him by the National Union of Teachers? Is he suggesting that the schools should have bigger desks so that they can use these huge sheets of paper?

Mr. Brooke: I think the matter arose out of some misunderstanding. I know that a local education authority issued a circular to head teachers in a certain area instructing them not to have very large sheets cut up in case that imposed on the education authority the necessity for registration. Frankly, I think the question is hypothetical, and I have no knowledge of any school being inconvenienced in this matter.

Mr. Woodburn: Is it right that education should be hampered by the law being an ass in this matter? If the law is wrong why should it not be put right?

Mr. Brooke: The law is not an ass, and there is no evidence of education or any school being inconvenienced in any way.

Mr. Janner: On a point of order. In view of the unsatisfactory reply, I propose to raise this matter at a convenient time.

Dr. Stross: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether the water bottles made of metal which are used by coal miners fall within the range of articles which will bear a Purchase Tax of 30 per cent.

Mr. H. Brooke: No, Sir.

Mr. Allaun: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer which kinds of dustbin will be subject to Purchase Tax under his Budget proposals.

Mr. H. Brooke: All dustbins of a kind used for domestic purposes.

Mr. Allaun: Is the Minister aware that dustbins—the most obvious of necessities, and previously free of tax—will now bear a Purchase Tax of 9s. 10d., raising the price from 26s. 3d. to 36s. 1d., which will cost people in Salford £3,000 a year extra and in larger cities larger sums?

Mr. Brooke: I could not accept the view that it is impossible to buy a dustbin for less than 26s. 3d.—although I do not


know about Salford—but these matters will be capable of further debate during the Committee stage of the Finance Bill.

National Savings

Mr. N. Pannell: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will now favourably consider a fresh issue of National Savings Certificates and/or higher interest rates for Post Office Savings, to bring them more in line with present money rates and so, by the encouragement of thrift, combat inflation in the most effective manner.

Mr. H. Brooke: We are all agreed that National Savings should be encouraged; and while I do not think that the measures suggested by my hon. Friend would be the best way, my right hon. Friend has recently approved the introduction of a new issue of Defence Bonds bearing interest at 4 per cent. and the raising of the limit on holdings of National Savings Certificates from 1,000 to 1,200 units.

Mr. Pannell: While thanking my right hon. Friend for that reply, may I ask him to take into account that over the last ten years the increase in the value of National Savings Certificates has been offset by the fall in the purchasing power of the £? Does he not think that the time has come to offer greater inducements to small savers to invest in Savings Certificates?

Mr. Brooke: I attach very great importance to keeping up the sales of Savings Certificates, but those sales are going reasonably well at present and I am certainly not advised that they would be accelerated by a new issue on more favourable terms.

Shilling Coins

Mr. Gresham Cooke: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in view of the shortage of shilling pieces, he will instruct the Mint to produce substantially greater quantities.

Mr. H. Brooke: I understand that the Mint's stock of shillings are sufficient to meet all requirements reported to it by the banks. Since the beginning of 1953 the Mint has struck over 160 million shillings.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there seems to be a chronic shortage of shillings for gas and

electricity meters? Will he consider the position which will arise if and when parking meters are introduced, too?

Mr. Brooke: Many of us are short of shillings and sixpences from time to time, but the arrangement is that the Mint responds to requests which it receives from the head offices of the banks, and if there is a shortage in any area all that needs to be done is for the banks to set the machinery in motion.

Balance of Payments (Dollar Deficit)

Mr. Warbey: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the final deficit in United Kingdom current transactions with the dollar area during the twelve months ended 30Th June, 1955, excluding defence aid.

Sir E. Boyle: I would refer the hon. Member to Command 9585 Tables 6 and 8, item 15, for the latest estimates.

Mr. Warbey: Since the Treasury will not do the addition sum for me, would I be right in saying that the amount of this dollar gap is something like £250 million? In the light of that, will the Government get away from its doctrinaire, free market notions and begin to put forward real measures for closing the gap?

Sir E. Boyle: The answer to the second part of the Question is "No, Sir, certainly not". The answer to the first part is that the current balance, including defence aid, is not minus £250 million, but minus £191 million.

Mr. H. Morrison: Are we to understand from the statement of the Economic Secretary that the Government will take no steps to close the gap, because that is what he said?

Sir E. Boyle: No, but that we will not go back to the war-time economy of physical controls.

Mr. Warbey: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the amount of gold and dollars lost in transactions with the countries of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation during the twelve months ended 30th June, 1955, by the sterling area as a whole and by the United Kingdom alone.

Sir E. Boyle: For the sterling area as a whole I would refer the hon. Member for the latest estimates to Command 9585, where he will find them most conveniently set out in Table 9. It is not possible to allot these gold and dollar payments to the United Kingdom and the rest of the sterling area respectively.

Mr. Warbey: As, so far as I can make out, the figure appears to be somewhere very near the total loss of our gold and dollars for the period in question, can the hon. Gentleman explain why the Government agreed this year to increase to 75 per cent. the amount of our E.P.U. deficit which we settle in gold and dollars, and thus add further to the drain on our reserves?

Sir E. Boyle: We believe in the principle of moving to a freer system of trade and payments. I have said that many times in this House, and I stand by that.

National Theatre

Mr. Lewis: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how much the Treasury has given to the cost of building a national theatre; to what purpose the grant made has been put; and what progress has been made towards the construction of this theatre.

Mr. H. Brooke: It has not yet been possible to authorise a start on this project. No funds, therefore, have been provided.

Dr. Stross: Will the Financial Secretary bear in mind that the £1 million which was originally voted by this House when the Labour Government were in power in 1949 would by no means be enough now? Can we have an assurance that if the project is commenced additional sums will be made available?

Mr. Brooke: I think that all these matters are hypothetical. At present there is no question of the project being commenced and, meanwhile, we are bound by the 1949 Act.

Museums and Art Galleries (E1 Greco Paintings)

Dr. Stross: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many paintings by E1 Greco are in the possession of the art galleries of England and Wales which receive direct aid from the Treasury.

Mr. H. Brooke: Excluding the recently acquired picture known as "The Dream of Philip II," the National Gallery has two pictures catalogued as by E1 Greco. One of these is by many scholars—including the Director—not attributed to El Greco himself. The National Gallery also has two very small pictures catalogued as from E1 Greco's studio.
I understand that the National Museum of Wales also possesses two pictures attributed to E1 Greco.

Dr. Stross: Whilst congratulating the Chancellor on assisting the nation to get a real E1 Greco—at least we hope it is real this time—may I ask whether the right hon. Gentleman will please nudge his right hon. Friend's elbow after the passing of the Finance Bill, and remind him of the sad plight of provincial museums and galleries, some of which are threatened with closure in the absence of financial assistance?

Mr. Brooke: I am glad that the hon. Member approves the action of the Chancellor in the case of this picture, but the needs of provincial museums and galleries lie outside the scope of this Question.

£ Sterling (Value)

Sir I. Fraser: asked the Secretary to the Treasury what, taking the value of the £ at 20s. in 1938, was its value in February, 1946, May, 1952, February, 1955, and at the latest available date.

Sir E. Boyle: Taking the internal purchasing power of the £ as 20s. in 1938, it is estimated that the corresponding figure for 1946—for which monthly figures are not available—was 11s. 10d.; for May, 1952, 8s. 6d.; for February, 1955, 8s., and for September, 1955. 7s. 10d.
This estimate is based on the Consumer Price Index, which is available for calendar years from 1938 to 1954, supplemented by the Interim Index of Retail Prices, which has been used as a link to give the figures for particular months.

Sir I. Fraser: May I ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, through my hon. Friend, whether he considers that these figures, and the trend which they show, indicate that we have a duty to look after those who are hurt by inflation,


but equally a duty to take all possible steps to see that inflation does not continue so rapidly?

Sir E. Boyle: I entirely agree with what my hon. Friend has said.

Mr. M. Stewart: In view of the need to curb inflation, is it not important not to waste money by giving subsidies to private schools, as was suggested in an earlier Question by the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale (Sir I. Fraser).

ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH, MALTA

Mr. Teeling: asked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the official pronouncement made by the Archbishop of Malta in the Cathedral at Valetta, particulars of which have been sent him by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion, he will give an assurance that Her Majesty's Government will retain the position of authority at present enjoyed by the Roman Catholic Church in Malta, and that they will take notice of recent feeling in the island on this matter.

The Prime Minister (Sir Anthony Eden): I do not think that it is for me to comment on what the Archbishop said in a sermon in the Cathedral at Valetta; but the present Constitution of Malta guarantees liberty of conscience for all persons. My hon. Friend can be assured that Her Majesty's Government will take no action to prejudice the position of the Roman Catholic Church in Malta.

Mr. Teeling: Does my right hon. Friend realise how much satisfaction that answer will give to Roman Catholics both in this country and in Malta?

EMPLOYMENT (IMMIGRANTS)

Mr. Osborne: asked the Prime Minister, since the recent change in defence policy and our reliance upon new scientific weapons rather than mass-produced conventional weapons must lead to re-deployment and temporary unemployment in the armament industry, if he will take immediate steps to control all immigration into the United Kingdom, which in recent years has been stimulated by the artificial shortage of labour, and so prevent any possible recurrence of permanent unemployment.

The Prime Minister: While I cannot accept the implications of this Question, I would refer my hon. Friend to the answer given on 27th October by my right hon. and gallant Friend the Home Secretary. The immigration of aliens into the United Kingdom has long been controlled.

Mr. Osborne: May I ask the Prime Minister if he is aware that there is strong feeling over these fears, which are already felt in places like Coventry and Birmingham? If I send my right hon. Friend some evidence, will he be good enough to look at it and give it further consideration?

The Prime Minister: I am conscious of the evidence and I am conscious that this is a problem. There has, of course, been a considerable increase—as probably the House knows—in the migration of West Indians to this country and also from the Indian sub-continent, but I think at the same time the House will also bear in mind the traditions by which we have always hitherto been careful to observe the rights of British subjects. Whatever our feelings may be, the problem is not an easy one to solve.

Mr. J. Griffiths: May I ask the Prime Minister whether, before taking any such step as is contemplated in this Question, he will consult the Colonial and Commonwealth countries concerned because of repercussions in the Commonwealth?

The Prime Minister: There is no question of any action. I think I made that clear in my Answer. This matter is incredibly involved. Among other things, the largest migration is from Eire.

COMMONWEALTH PRIME MINISTERS' MEETING

Mr. Alport: asked the Prime Minister whether he is now in a position to state the date of the next Commonwealth Prime Ministers' meeting.

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. My Commonwealth colleagues and I have agreed that the opening meeting shall take place on 27th June next year.

Mr. Alport: May I ask my right hon. Friend whether he expects the members of the Commonwealth to be represented in all cases by their Prime Ministers, or


whether there is any indication of any of them sending other Ministers to represent them?

The Prime Minister: That is my hope and expectation. Of course I cannot bind my colleagues—it is for them to decide—but as at present arranged all the countries concerned will be represented by Prime Ministers.

Mr. J. Griffiths: Has it been considered that the Prime Minister of the Gold Coast might be invited to the next conference?

The Prime Minister: I have dealt with the question of the invitations to the Conference in my earlier Answer. I do not think I want to go beyond that at present.

Mr. Shinwell: As it appears that at the last Commonwealth Prime Ministers' conference the subject of Commonwealth defence was not on the agenda, can we be assured that at the next Prime Ministers' conference that item will appear on the agenda—the question of Commonwealth defence co-operation?

The Prime Minister: As I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman has attended these conferences, he will know quite well that as a rule there are no formal agendas submitted and agreed. The essence of the discussions is that they are informal as between the Prime Ministers concerned. It would not be for me any more than for any of the others to lay down what the agenda should be. I have no doubt that there will be certain discussions on defence matters, whatever the form in which they take place.

Mr. Dugdale: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether an invitation has been sent to Lord Malvern and, if the answer is "Yes," whether it was made clear that it has been sent to him purely in his personal capacity and not as the Prime Minister of a part of the Commonwealth which is not yet entirely self-governing?

The Prime Minister: I am quite sure an invitation has been sent to Lord Malvern, and I am quite sure that it would be the wish in all parts of the House that such an invitation should have been sent.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. H. Morrison: May I ask the Leader of the House whether he will state the business which it is proposed to take next week?

The Lord Privy Seal (Mr. Harry Crookshank): Yes, Sir. The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY, 14TH NovEmBER—Consideration of Motions for Addresses to continue in force for a further year certain emergency legislation which is already on the Order Paper.
Second Reading of the Food and Drugs Bill [Lords], which is a consolidation Measure.
Committee and remaining stages of the Post Office and Telegraph [Money] Bill.
Afterwards there will be an opportunity to debate the Report on Post Office Development and Finance which will arise on a Motion to be tabled by the Government.
TUESDAY, 15TH NOVEMBER, and WEDNESDAY, 16TH NOVEMBER—Committee stage of the Finance Bill.
THURSDAY, 17TH NOVEMBER—Second Reading of the Housing Subsidies Bill.
Committee stage of the necessary Money Resolution.
FRIDAY, 18TH NOVEMBER—Consideration of Private Members' Motions.

Mr. Morrison: Is it not really improper that the Second Reading of the Housing Subsidies Bill should be given only one day? It is a Bill which affects the wellbeing of millions of people—municipal tenants, local authorities, and, indirectly, people who are buying their own houses. In these circumstances, ought not we to have two days for the Second Reading?

Mr. Crookshank: The Government thought that in all the circumstances one day for the Second Reading and the Committee stage of the necessary Money Resolution would be adequate, but if the right hon. Gentleman and his friends feel very strongly about the matter we shall be quite ready to meet their wishes and have a second day. I suggest, therefore, that we adjourn the Second Reading debate on Thursday and resume it upon


the following Monday and then bring it to a conclusion. I hope that it will be understood that we should also finish the Committee stage of the Money Resolution without sitting unduly late.

Mr. Morrison: I am much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman, but I would like to put this to him. It is not too convenient to interrupt the Second Reading of the Housing Subsidies Bill. It is not a tidy Parliamentary procedure. As there are to be two days for the Committee stage of the Finance Bill, the interruption of which really does not matter anywhere near as much as the interruption of the Second Reading of what really is a first-class Bill—[Laughter.] I am not saying that it is first-class in quality; I am saying that it is first-class in statutory importance. Hon. Members opposite know that, but I am all in favour of their trying to cheer themslves up.
In view of the importance of the Housing Subsidies Bill—perhaps that will get it right—and the lesser objection to interrupting the Committee stage of the Finance Bill—which in any case, I imagine, will not be finished next week—cannot the right hon. Gentleman postpone one day of the Committee stage of the Finance Bill and give us two consecutive days for the debate on the Housing Subsidies Bill? I submit that that would not be an unreasonable arrangement, and would be more in accordance with Parliamentary practice.

Mr. Crookshank: I do not know that I can accept the right hon. Gentleman's proposition that his suggestion is more in accordance with Parliamentary practice; what I have suggested has often been done. The right hon. Gentleman is being a little ungrateful, because I readily conceded the second day, although, in my opinion, it is not really necessary. I hope that, upon consideration, he will be prepared to accept this arangement, which has its points.

Mr. Bevan: May I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman one very undesirable feature of the proposed arrangement? The Finance Bill is almost certain to be carried over to the following week, as my right hon. Friend has said. It is in Committee, and, therefore, the discussion is bound to be interrupted, whereas it

would be possible to allocate Wednesday and Thursday to the Housing Subsidies Bill, thereby having a continuous debate. I suggest that it would be highly undesirable if hon. Members and members of the Government did not have an immediate opportunity of replying to what was said upon the previous day, but had to wait right over the week-end. The 14-day rule is far milder than that. Points raised by hon. Members could be answered outside the House without hon. Members being able to have a chance to answer and debate them inside the House, or the Government being able to wind up the debate. That would be a most undesirable, untidy and unparliamentary affair.

Mr. Crookshank: I have often heard a speech being made from the Government Front Bench to conclude the first day of a debate.

Mr. Morrison: Would the right hon. Gentleman be good enough to tell the House whether there is a real difficulty about holding over one day of discussion on the Finance Bill in Committee? I cannot imagine that there can be. It does not make any difference, because the right hon. Gentleman can substitute another day for the Committee stage of that Bill. In those circumstances, as I cannot see any material objection to it, will not he be good enough at least to consider the arrangement I have suggested, whereby we can have two consecutive days' debate upon the Housing. Subsidies Bill? I do appreciate the offer which he has made.

Mr. Crookshank: I quite appreciate that the right hon. Gentleman is entitled to have his views upon these matters and put them before me for consideration by the Government—but we also have to consider our handling of the business. I try to accommodate both sides of the House as well as I may, and my contribution to that today has been to give an extra day to the Opposition upon the ensuing Monday, without disturbing plans which we had already made for the week.

Mr. Morrison: I appreciate that, but I also appreciate the reasons for my right hon. Friend's interjection concerning these three days' interruption. I still do not understand why it is not preferable to postpone one of the days allocated to the


Committee stage of the Finance
Bill. Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us what is the material difficulty about that?

Mr. Crookshank: If the right hon. Gentleman feels in difficulty about the three days' interval we can always go back to the original arrangement and deal with the matter in one day.

Mr. Hirst: Can my right hon. Friend allow time at a reasonably early date for a discussion of the Phillips Report? We have been promised it many times, and many of the interests involved are beginning to feel that they are being rather put on the shelf. Can my right hon. Friend find time for a discussion of the matter before Christmas?

Mr. Crookshank: I do not think that I can make any statement today upon that subject.

Mr. Grimond: In view of recent developments, has the right hon. Gentleman given any more thought to a possible debate upon the 14-day broadcast and television ban?

Mr. Crookshank: Everybody else seems to have given the subject thought and issued statements upon it, but the matter remains as I put it before, and as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister put it. We shall be quite ready to have a debate if there is a general desire for it and it is made through the usual channels.

Mr. L. M. Lever: In view of the refreshing and forthright speech which the Prime Minister made outside the House last night, relating to the serious situation in the Middle East, will he make an early statement in the House upon the subject, and upon the question of giving arms to Israel in order to maintain a balance and save the peace in the Middle East and the world?

Mr. Crookshank: I am sure that my right hon. Friend will be grateful for the tribute made to his speech by the right hon. Gentleman. As he is not very far away, I have no doubt that he has noted what the hon. Member has said.

Mr. Lindgren: May I add to the appeal which my right hon. Friend the deputy Leader of the Opposition has made about the debate upon the Housing Subsidies Bill? From the back benchers' point of view it is much more desirable that it should be a continuous debate, and I assure the Leader of the House that my right hon. Friends were not speaking for

the Opposition Front Bench only but making a request for a concession which would be much appreciated by the back benchers if it were granted, namely, two days for the debate in one week. We do appreciate the Government's allowing us a second day for the debate on the Housing Subsidies Bill.

Mr. Shinwell: On a point of order. I should like your guidance in this matter, Mr. Speaker. The Leader of the House has declined, in spite of efforts on the part of my right hon. Friends, to reconsider his decision, which seems to me to be quite arbitrary, and will not allow two consecutive days for the discussion of a very important matter. What redress have hon. Members? Can I move the Adjournment of the House to discuss the decision of the Leader of the House? Or are we bound to accept an arbitrary decision by the Leader of the House on a matter of this importance?

Mr. Speaker: I can be of very little assistance to the right hon. Gentleman. This is certainly not a subject on which the Adjournment of the House can be moved. The Government have always had the right to state the business for the day or the week, as the case may be. I am afraid that there is no remedy, other than the normal Parliamentary one, for the situation with which the right hon. Gentleman disagrees.

Mr. Shinwell: I do not deny that the Government have a perfect right to organise their business. [HON. MEMBERS: "We thank the right hon. Gentleman."] I am well aware of that. I have been here long enough to know that. Some hon. Members seem to have a grasp of the obvious. The point is that although it is within the prerogative of the Government to organise the business of the House, it is surely not going too far that private Members should seek to dissuade the Government from what is a wrong intention. What means have we to enable us to do so?

Mr. Speaker: No means other than the normal Parliamentary ones. In the last ten minutes I have heard a good deal of dissuasion of the Government on this very topic. Whether it will be successful or not is not for me to say.

Mr. J. Griffiths: Has not the Leader of the House responsibilities to either side of the House, Sir, and is it not his duty


to consult the convenience of Members on both sides and not merely the convenience of the Government when fixing business?

Mr. Speaker: It is certainly the normal practice that these matters are arranged by consultation, but I heard one change made in response to a request by the deputy Leader of the Opposition. But I cannot intervene in this matter. It has nothing to do with me.

Mr. H. Morrison: While protesting very strongly against the decision and the response of the Leader of the House, who has a responsibility to the whole House in this matter, may I put another point to him? As the Housing Subsidies Bill is substantially a financial Bill, can we take it that the Committee stage will be taken on the Floor of the House?

Mr. Crookshank: I think we had better get through the Second Reading before making any announcements about that. I really must say to the right hon. Gentleman that he is not being quite fair in saying that I am resisting his request, because I have offered him a second day.

Mr. Gower: Would not a week-end break be an advantage? Can we not anticipate wiser speeches if hon. Members have the time to think about them?

Dr. Stross: On a point of order. May I ask for your advice, Mr. Speaker? You were asked a few moments ago what rights back benchers have to express dissatisfaction with the statement made by the Leader of the House. Would it not be fair to say that there is a very easy method available to us, in that we can vote against the Government in a few moments to express our displeasure with them when they ask us to agree to a certain Motion, as they intend to do?

Dame Irene Ward: Before you give a Ruling, Mr. Speaker, may I ask you: are not private Members on this side of the House also back benchers?

Mr. Speaker: I do not feel bound to give any Ruling, because no point of order whatever has been raised.

Mr. Lewis: Reverting to my right hon. Friend's question, can the Leader of the House now say what physical objections, what reasonable objections, there are to the Government's agreeing to the legitimate request to let us have two con-

secutive days for the debate on the Housing Subsidies Bill by postponing one of the days for the Finance Bill? Can he tell us, in a sincere, honest and straightforward way, why the Government cannot agree to it? What is in their mind?

Mr. Crookshank: I do not know what a physical answer to a question of that sort may be.

Mr. Lewis: Can we have any sort of answer?

PERSONAL STATEMENT

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: In a supplementary question on the disappearance of Burgess and Maclean, on 25th October, I asked the Prime Minister whether he had made up his mind to cover up
… the dubious third man activities of Mr. Harold Philby … "—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th October, 1955; Vol. 545, c. 29.]
some-time First Secretary at the Washington Embassy. During my speech in last Monday's debate I said that after considering my note of what the Foreign Secretary had said I could not depart from the terms of my supplementary question on 25th October.
I have since considered carefully the full report of Monday's debate and, in particular, the speech of the Foreign Secretary. I have also read the statement issued to the Press by Mr. Philby, in which, according to The Times newspaper report of it, he refers to his personal friendship for Burgess and says that he regards his resignation from the Foreign Office as a direct result of an imprudent association.
As a consequence of that further examination, I am satisfied that there is no justification for the allegation that Mr. Philby is the person who warned Burgess and Maclean, or that he engaged in dubious, third man activities. In such circumstances, I consider it proper, and regard it as my duty, to withdraw unreservedly the charge implied in my supplementary question and in my remarks during the debate last Monday, and, accordingly, I have asked permission to make this statement to the House, so that it may appear in the OFFICIAL REPORT of the proceedings of this House, and in order to say how deeply I regret that the charge was made.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Motion made, and Question put,
That the Proceedings on Government Business be exempted, at this day's Sitting, from

the provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House).—[Mr. Crookshank.]

The House divided: Ayes 232, Noes 157.

Division No. 37.]
AYES
[3.48 p.m.


Agnew, Cmdr. P. G.
Fleetwood-Hesketh, R. F.
Maclay, Rt. Hon. John


Aitken, W. T.
Fletcher-Cooke, C.
McLean, Neil (Inverness)


Allan, R. A. (Paddington, S.)
Fort, R.
Macleod, Rt. Hn. Iain (Enfield, W.)


Alport, C. J. M.
Foster, John
Macmillan, Maurice (Halifax)


Amery, Julian (Preston, N.)
Fraser, Hon. Hugh (Stone)
Macpherson, Niall (Dumfries)


Amory, Rt. Hn. Heathcoat (Tiverton)
Fraser, Sir Ian (M'cmbe &amp; Lonsdale)
Maddan, Martin


Anstruther-Gray, Major W. J.
Freeth, D. K.
Maitland, Hon. Patrick (Lanark)


Arbuthnot, John
Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.
Marples, A. E.


Armstrong, C. W.
Garner-Evans, E. H.
Mathew, R.


Ashton, H.
George, J. C. (Pollok)
Maude, Angus


Astor, Hon. J. J.
Gomme-Duncan, Col. A.
Mawby, R. L.


Atkins, H. E.
Gower, H. R.
Maydon, Lt.-Comdr. S. L. C.


Baldock, Lt.-Cmdr. J. M.
Graham, Sir Fergus
Moore, Sir Thomas


Baldwin, A. E.
Grant, W. (Woodside)
Morrison, John (Salisbury)


Balniel, Lord
Green, A.
Nairn, D. L. S.


Barber, Anthony
Gresham Cooke, R.
Neave, Airey


Barter, John
Grimond, J.
Nicholls, Harmar


Baxter, Sir Beverley
Grimston, Hon. John (St. Albans)
Noble, Comdr. A. H. P.


Beamish, Maj. Tufton
Grimston, Sir Robert (Westbury)
Oakshott, H. D.


Beattie, C.
Gurden, Harold
O'Neill, Hn. Phelim (Co. Antrim, N.)


Bell, Ronald (Bucks, S.)
Hall, John (Wycombe)
Page, R. G.


Bevins, J. R. (Toxteth)
Hare, Hon. J. H.
Panned, N. A. (Kirkdale)


Bidgood, J. C.
Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)
Partridge, E.


Biggs-Davison, J. A.
Harris, Reader (Heston)
Peake, Rt. Hon. O.


Birch, Rt. Hon. Nigel
Harrison, A. B. C. (Maldon)
Peyton, J. W. W.


Black, C. W.
Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)
Pickthorn, K. W. M.


Body, R. F.
Harvey, Air Cdre, A. V. (Macclesfd)
Pilkington, Capt. R. A.


Bossom, Sir A. C.
Harvey, Ian (Harrow, E.)
Pitt, Miss E. M.


Boyle, Sir Edward
Hay, John
Pott, H. P.


Braine, B. R.
Heath, Edward
Powell, J. Enoch


Braithwaite, Sir Albert (Harrow, W.)
Hicks-Beach, Maj. W. W.



Brooke, Rt. Hon. Henry
Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)
Price, David (Eastleigh)




Price, Henry (Lewisham, W.)


Brooman-White, R. G.
Hill, John (S. Norfolk)
Raikes, Sir Victor


Browne, J. Nixon (Craigton)
Hinchingbrooke, Viscount
Rawlinson, P. A. G.


Bryan, P.
Hirst, Geoffrey
Rees-Davies, W. R.



Holland-Martin, C. J.



Buchan-Hepburn, Rt. Hon. P. G. T.

Remnant, Hon. P.


Bullus, Wing Commander E. E.
Holt, A. F.
Renton, D. L. M.


Burden, F. F. A.
Hope, Lord John



Butcher, Sir Herbert
Hornsby-Smith, Miss M.P.
Ridsdale, J. E.


Campbell, Sir David
Horsbrugh, Rt. Hon. Dame Florence
Rippon, A. G. F.


Carr, Robert
Howard, Hon. Creville (St. Ives)
Robertson, Sir David


Cary, Sir Robert
Howard, John (Test)
Robinson, Sir Roland (Blackpool, S.)


Cary, Sir Robert
Hudson, Sir Austin (Lewisham, N.)
Roper, Sir Harold


Channon, H.
Hughes-Young, M. H. C.
Ropner, Col. Sir Leonard


Chichester-Clark, R.
Hulbert, Sir Norman
Russell, R. S.


Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmth, W.)
Hutchison, Sir Ian Clark (E'b'gh, W.)
Schofield, Lt. Col. W.


Cole, Norman
Hyde, Montgomery
Sharples, Maj. R. C.


Cooper, Sqn. Ldr. Albert
Iremonger, T. L.
Shepherd, William


Cordeaux, Lt.-Col. J. K.
Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)
Smithers, Peter (Winchester)


Corfield, Capt. F. V.
Jennings, J. C. (Burton)
Smyth, Brig. J. G. (Norwood)


Craddock, Beresford (Spelthorne)
Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)
Soames, Capt. C.


Crookshank, Capt. Rt. Hn. H. F. C.
Johnson, Eric (Blackley)
Speir, R. M.


Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.
Joynson-Hicks, Hon. L. W.
Spens, Rt. Hn. Sir P. (Kens'gt'n, S.)


Crouch, R. F.
Kaberry, D.
Stanley, Capt. Hon. Richard


Crowder, Sir John (Finchley)
Keegan, D.
Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)


Cunningham, Knox
Kerby, Capt. H. B.
Steward, Sir William (Woolwich, W.)


Dance, J. C. G.
Kerr, H. W.
Stewart, Henderson (Fife, E.)


Davidson, Viscountess
Kershaw, J. A.
Storey, S.


D'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Kirk, P. M.
Studholme, H. G.


Deedes, W. F.
Lagden, G. W.
Summers, G. S. (Aylesbury)


Dodds-Parker, A. D.
Lambert, Hon. G.
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)


Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. McA.
Lancaster, Col. C. G.
Teeling, W.


Drayson, G. B.
Leburn, W. G.
Thomas, Rt. Hn. J. P. L. (Hereford)


Dugdale, Rt. Hn. Sir T. (Richmond)
Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.
Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)


Duncan, Capt. J. A. L.
Lindsay, Hon. James (Devon, N.)
Thompson, Lt.-Cdr. R.(Croydon, S.)


Duthie, W. S.
Lindsay, Martin (Solihull)
Thorneycroft, Rt. Hon. P.


Eccles, Rt. Hon. Sir D. M.
Linstead, Sir H. N.
Thornton-Kemsley, C. N.


Eden, Rt. Hn. Sir A.(Warwick &amp; L'm'tn)
Lloyd, Maj. Sir Guy (Renfrew, E.)
Tiley, A. (Bradford, W.)


Elliot, Rt. Hon. w. E.
Lloyd, Rt. Hon. Selwyn (Wirral)
Touche, Sir Gordon


Emmet, Hon. Mrs. Evelyn
Longden, Gilbert
Turner, H. F. L.


Farey-Jones, F. W.
Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Tweedsmuir, Lady


Fell, A.
McAdden, S. J.
Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.


Finlay, Graeme
Macdonald, Sir Peter
Vosper, D. F.


Fisher, Nigel
Mackie, J. H. (Galloway)
Walker-Smith, D. C.




Wall, Major Patrick
Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)
Woollam, John Victor


Ward, Dame Irene (Tynemouth)
Williams, R. Dudley (Exeter)
Yates, William (The Wrekin)


Waterhouse, Capt. Rt. Hon. C.
Wills, G. (Bridgwater)



Webbe, Sir H.
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Whitelaw, W.S.I. (Penrith &amp; Border)
Wood, Hon. R.
Mr. Legh and




Mr. Edward Wakefield,




NOES


Ainsley, J. W.
Greenwood, Anthony
Paling, Will T. (Dewsbury)


Albu, A. H.
Grey, C. F.
Pannell, Charles (Leeds, W.)


Allaun, F. (Salford, E.)
Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)
Paton, J.


Allen, Arthur (Bosworth)
Hamilton, W. W.
Pearson, A.


Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)
Hannan, W.
Peart, T. F.


Awbery, S. S.
Hastings, S.
Popplewell, E.


Bacon, Miss Alice
Hayman, F. H.
Proctor, W. T.


Balfour, A.
Herbison, Miss M.
Pryde, D. J.


Bellenger, Rt. Hon. F. J.
Holmes, Horace
Rankin, John


Bence, C. R. (Dunbartonshire, E.)
Howell, Denis (All Saints)
Reid, William


Benn, Hn. Wedgwood (Bristol, S.E.)
Hoy, J. H.
Robens, Rt. Hon. A.


Beswick, F,
Hubbard, T. F.
Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)


Bevan, Rt. Hon. A. (Ebbw Vale)
Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)
Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)


Blackburn, F,
Hunter, A. E.
Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)


Blenkinsop, A.
Hynd, H. (Accrington)
Ross, William


Bottomley, Rt. Hon. A. G.
Hynd, J. B. (Attercliffe)
Royle, C.


Bowden, H. W. (Leicester, S.W.)
Irving, S. (Dartford)
Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.


Bowles, F. G.
Isaacs, Rt. Hon. G. A.
Short, E. W.


Boyd, T. C.
Janner, B.
Silverman, Julius (Aston)


Braddock, Mrs. Elizabeth
Jeger, George (Goole)
Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)


Brockway, A. F.
Johnson, James (Rugby)
Skeffington, A. M.


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.
Jones, Rt. Hon. A. Creech(Wakefield)
Slater, Mrs. H. (Stoke, N.)


Brown, Thomas (Ince)
Jones, David (The Hartlepools)
Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)
Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)
Snow, J. W.


Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)
Key, Rt. Hon. G. W.
Sorensen, R. W.


Callaghan, L. J.
King, Dr. H. M.
Sparks, J. A.


Champion, A. J.
Lawson, G. M,
Steele, T.


Chapman, W. D.
Ledger, R. J.
Stewart, Michael (Fulham)


Chetwynd, G. R.
Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)
Stones, W. (Consett)


Clunie, J.
Lever, Leslie (Ardwick)
Summerskill, Rt. Hon. E.


Coldrick, W.
Lewis, Arthur
Taylor, John (West Lothian)


Collick, P. H. (Birkenhead)
Lindgren, G. S.
Thomson, George (Dundee, E.)


Collins, V. J. (Shoreditch &amp; Finsbury)
Lipton, Lt.-Col. M.
Thornton, E.


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
MacColl, J. E.
Tomney, F.


Cove, W. G.
McInnes, J.
Viant, S. P.


Craddock, George (Bragford, S.)
McKay, John (Wallsend)
Warbey, W. N.



McLeavy, Frank
Wells, Percy (Faversham)


Cronin, J. D.
MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)
West, D. G.


Crossman, R. H. S.
Mahon, S.
Wheeldon, W. E.


Cullen, Mrs. A.
Mann, Mrs. Jean
White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)


Davies, Ernest (Enfield, E.)
Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.
Willey, Frederick


Deer, G.
Mayhew, C. P.
Williams, Ronald (Wigan)


Donnelly, D. L.
Mellish, R. J.
Williams, Rt. Hon. T. (Don Valley)


Dugdale, Rt. Hn. John (W. Brmwch)
Messer, Sir F.
Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)


Dye, S.
Mikardo, Ian
Willis, E. G. (Edinburgh, E.)


Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)
Mitchison, G. R.
Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Moody, A. S.
Winterbottom, Richard


Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)
Morris, Percy (Swansea, W.)
Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.


Evans, Stanley (Wednesbury)
Morrison, Rt. Hn. Herbert (Lewis'm, S.)
Yates, V. (Ladywood)


Fernyhough, E.
Moss, R.
Younger, Rt. Hon. K.


Forman, J. C.
Oram, A. E.



Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)
Orbach, M.
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Galtskell, Rt. Hon. H. T. N.
Oswald, T.
Mr. Wilkins and Mr. J. T. Price.


Gordon Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.
Owen, W. J.

SUGAR BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

4.0 p.m.

The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. D. Heathcoat Amory): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The purpose of this Bill, which I hope the House will feel is a sensible one, is to end State trading in sugar and to give importers and traders as big a measure of freedom as we can compatible with the responsibilities of the Government under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement and the Agriculture Act, 1947. The proposed arrangements were outlined in the White Paper which the Government issued towards the end of July. The Bill looks at first sight to be a complicated one, but I hope that hon. and right hon. Members will find, when they look more closely at it, that it is fairly simple in its main provisions. I will, therefore, try to deal with the matter as shortly as I can.
Sugar, in the past, has often been a controversial subject. Mr. Disraeli, with his highly developed sense of political realities, once observed:
Strange that a manufacture which charms infancy and soothes old age should so frequently occasion political disaster.
He was then discussing the Sugar Duties, in 1846, which heralded the abolition of the sugar preferences which, since Cromwell's days, we had used to support our sugar Colonies, and the eventual abolition of which heralded disaster for them. I doubt whether sugar is quite so controversial today. Anyhow, I am sure that it no longer divides the House on party lines and I believe that there is no difference between the opinion of the Government and the Opposition on the importance of supporting the sugar beet industry at home or of supporting the sugar cane industries in the Commonwealth.
The sugar beet industry has been
supported by all Governments during the past thirty years, and the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement was a joint enterprise begun by the Opposition and completed by the present Government. Of the Com

monwealth Sugar Agreement, the Special Correspondent of The Times wrote:
Undoubtedly the most successful experiment in colonial development that Great Britain has ever made.
Its psychological effects on the West Indies, both on the management and on the workpeople, have, he said, been "incalculable."
So it is a real satisfaction that all parties can claim to have contributed to the developments of the past thirty or forty years which have so revolutionised affairs that, whereas in the first decade of this century over 90 per cent. of the sugar we consumed in this country came from foreign sources, today more than 90 per cent. of the sugar we consume comes either from our own farmers or from the Commonwealth. I therefore hope that there will be sufficient support from all sides of the House for the present Bill, which enables the Government to fulfil their obligations to producers in this country under the Agriculture Act and to Commonwealth exporters under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement of 1951.
From what I have said the House will have gathered that we have no intention, in this Bill, to undo any of the work of the past. The purpose is to provide a legislative framework within which our home-grown sugar industry and the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, on which we rely for almost the entire sugar we consume here, should be integrated with normal commerce in the United Kingdom.
The objectives are, first, to end State trading and to facilitate the opening of the London Terminal Sugar Market and the recovery by London of its old preeminence as a centre of the international trade in sugar. That objective is an important one. Secondly, it is to bring up to date certain legislation dealing with the sugar industry at home. The Bill seeks to do these two things in such a way that the Government will continue to remain solely and directly responsible for fulfilling our obligations under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement and to farmers under the Agriculture Act. I would like to emphasise strongly that this Bill makes no change in our obligations as a Government in both those directions.
Today, in the United Kingdom, we consume about 2½ million tons of raw sugar a year, of which 1,568,000 tons comes in


under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement at a price which is negotiated each year with the producers. Between 600,000 and 700,000 tons, depending upon the yields of the crop, comes through the British Sugar Corporation from our own sugar beet production for which, as the House knows, growers are paid the price guaranteed at the time of the Annual Review.
Any balance of our requirements comes, in practice, from Commonwealth supplies outside the negotiated quantity or from foreign sources in the open market. At present, the Commonwealth negotiated price, and the cost of producing sugar at home from our own sugar beet, are both substantially higher than the so-called world price. I say "so-called" because the world price, though it is the vehicle of a considerable part of the international trade in sugar, is not the price at which the greater part of world sugar producers are remunerated. Indeed, the world price applies to rather less than one-third of the sugar entering international trade, or one-tenth of the world's sugar production. For instance, Cuba, the largest exporter of all, exports to the United States a larger quantity than the whole of the quantity provided for under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement at prices which are in excess of the Commonwealth negotiated price.
I want to say a word about what I will call the averaging of prices.

Mr. Arthur Holt: Before the right hon. Gentleman leaves that point, would he tell us what are the differences between the Commonwealth price, the Cuban price, and the world price?

Mr. Amory: I would prefer to ask my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to give those figures at the end of the debate, but the difference is substantial. If the hon. Gentleman would like me to give them from memory, the difference is about £10 a ton between the world market price and the present Commonwealth negotiated price, excluding Empire preference. If, however, that figure is badly out, I will ask my hon. Friend to correct it at the end of the debate.
As the House knows, my own Department still imports all sugar for internal consumption and all this imported sugar,

irrespective of its origin and price, is resold to the trade at a common price sufficient to cover the average cost to the Ministry. The result is that the internal price of sugar in the United Kingdom is at present above the world price. This average cost price determines also the price which the British Sugar Corporation gets for the sugar it sells.
Now I want to say something about foreign manufacturers exporting into this country goods containing sugar. If foreign manufacturers had access to sugar at world price they would have an advantage over our manufacturers in this country but for the fact that we have at present certain import licensing restrictions. Similarly, if the British exporter of goods containing sugar is not to be at a disadvantage with his competitors in other countries, he must be allowed to purchase sugar at world price like his competitors. The point I want to make is that the arrangements that we have at present for meeting these two difficulties are extremely complicated indeed. One advantage of the Bill is that we shall be able to simplify them considerably.
Under the arrangements provided in the Bill, averaging of prices will still be necessary. If the over-riding difficulties which I have mentioned in the way of freeing trade in sugar and manufactured sugar goods are to be removed, we have to find a new device to average the cost of imported and home-produced sugar, as the Ministry does today, and, at the same time, enable all the internal and external trade in sugar to be conducted on the basis of the world price; that is to say, the price at which ordinary international trade is conducted. We have, therefore, to marry the concept of guaranteed prices and markets to our own producers and Commonwealth exporters with the concept of freedom to traders to buy and sell at competitive prices while ensuring that an average internal price continues.
We propose that the agent for making those arrangements shall be a small Sugar Board composed of a chairman and not more than four members. We propose that the Board shall have the statutory obligation, first, of buying Commonwealth sugar which the United Kingdom has contracted to take at a negotiated price under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement. Secondly, it will have the duty of ensuring that the British Sugar Corporation will be able to pay a guaranteed price to


producers of sugar from sugar beet in this country.
The Bill provides that the Board should normally sell the sugar which it buys from the Commonwealth exporters in the country of origin before shipment at current world prices. In this way the sugar trade will resume its responsibility for the physical handling of sugar and also for making arrangements for freight, insurance and the like. The Board will not have any responsibility for trading in, taking delivery of, or buying any other Commonwealth sugar outside the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement unless it is specifically directed by the Minister to do so.
Commonwealth sugar enjoys a tariff protection in the United Kingdom and Canada, and after Commonwealth producers have met the important requirements of the Canadian refiners, they will, I think, have no difficulty in selling the balance of their production here when freedom returns. I have discussed this important aspect with the refiners, and they assure me that, as before the war, they will make it their practice to prefer Commonwealth sugar for the home trade requirements provided that it is offered competitively. In the past, refiners have adhered to this practice scrupulously, and I have no doubt of either their intention or their ability to do so in the future.
The effect of these arrangements will be that importers in this country will once again buy the supplies they need competitively at current commercial value, and Commonwealth sugar will once again play a full part in the operations of the London Sugar Market.
We have still to consider how to bring about the averaging of prices. If the world price of sugar is below the Commonwealth Agreement negotiated price, then the Sugar Board will make a deficit. If the world price is higher than the Commonwealth negotiated price, then it will have a surplus. At present, as I have mentioned, the world price is lower, and I think that is the pattern that we can normally expect to prevail.
Assuming for the moment that the Board makes a deficit, our proposal is that the Board shall recover the deficit from the proceeds of a surcharge—it is

really a levy—levied on all sugar and molasses on which sugar duty has been paid, including the sugar content of manufactured goods coming into this country. It will also be paid on the sugar emanating from the British Sugar Corporation. If, on the other hand, the world price is above the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement price, then the procedure will work exactly the other way round, and the surplus earned by the Board will be redistributed.
This averaging arrangement—that is what is really is—will not mean any higher charge for sugar. In effect, it is just carrying out in a different way the present price averaging system operated by my Department. If it were possible, for instance, to imagine introducing this charge tomorrow, the internal price of sugar would not be affected at all. I should like to repeat—because this is important—that this is only another way of doing the averaging and it will not mean any addition to the cost of internal sugar.
For the traders concerned, I think, and hope, that the method that we have chosen will be simple. The surcharge will
be collected by the Commissioners of
Customs and Excise as agents for the Sugar Board. It will be collected at the time when the Customs or Excise Duty is itself collected. Therefore, the traders will be paying their surcharge at the same time when the Customs or Excise Duty is enable the existing Customs and Excise law and machinery to be employed, so ensuring economical collection and, I think, from the point of view of the traders, the continuation of procedures to which they are well accustomed.
I now want to say a word about what I might call the reserve powers of the Board. I have described what the normal function of the Board will be, but, apart from the Board's primary responsibility for the purchase of Commonwealth sugar which the Government have contracted to take, we propose to give the Board certain other powers. We propose to give it power to buy other sugar and also to transport and store sugar, if necessary, but to do those things only at the direction of a Minister. Since the Board will, in the ordinary course of events, sell the sugar in the country of origin, we believe that it will rarely, if ever, be necessary for the Board itself to transport and store it.
We cannot be absolutely certain that in every case and in all circumstances the Board will be able to do that, so we thought we must provide that sugar could be transported and stored by the Board, if it became necessary to do so in the view of the Minister whose responsibility it is to give directions. We need reserve powers to buy sugar, apart from the Commonwealth-negotiated sugar, for other reasons. It might just be desirable that the Minister should be able to instruct the Board in certain circumstances to buy other Commonwealth sugar apart from the sugar which he has a statutory duty to buy at present.
We feel that this has not been made quite clear in the Bill as drafted. We think it is highly unlikely that the Minister would require to give such directions to buy such Commonwealth sugar, because, for the reasons I have given, the present tariff preferences, backed by the undertakings given by the refiners to give preference to Commonwealth sugar, should assure to Commonwealth exporters the market that they require in this country. We all know what a key position sugar occupies in the economy of some of the Colonies. However confident we may be that our arrangements will be sufficient and all right, it is proper that we should provide for circumstances which we cannot fully envisage, and so we make provision for this residual power.
In the Bill, the powers we give to buy sugar extend to sugar from any source and can be applied by general directions of the Minister as well as by a specific direction. That is a wider power than is necessary, so we propose to introduce an Amendment in the Committee to limit this power to buying Commonwealth sugar and to require the Minister to give a separate direction for each transaction, cargo by cargo; and also to consult the principal importers of sugar before giving any direction of this kind. That should put beyond any doubt whatever the position which the Board is intended to occupy in the sugar trade.

Mr. Frederick Willey: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is now dealing with the intention of the Government to change the Bill. Are these changes being made after representations by the sugar trade?

Mr. Amory: We have had representations of one kind or another on almost all aspects of the Bill. We have thought over the whole position, in the light of representations we have had from time to time, and we have concluded that this power in the Bill is unnecessarily wide and that we ought not to make it any wider than is actually necessary.
Now I would like to turn to the British Sugar Corporation. Clauses 7 to 16 are necessarily rather complicated, and deal with the law relating to the duty which
it is proposed should be applied also to the payment of surcharge. It is unnecessary for me at this stage to go far on to that ground, but I look forward to hearing in the Committee a lucid exposition from my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury on this subject. I will therefore turn to the part of the Bill which deals with the British Sugar Corporation.
We do not propose to interfere in any way with the existing structure of the Sugar Corporation. After eighteen years, it has shown itself to be an extremely efficient organisation and, under the leadership of the present chairman, on the appointment of whom I would like to congratulate the right hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey), its standards, already high, continue steadily to rise. It is a public company with private shareholders and articles of association, and with the chairman and two directors nominated by the Government. Its policies are regulated by the Government.
That may not seem a very logical affair, but it works, and works very well. By this practical test I cannot see any grounds for interfering with this well-established and efficient enterprise, or for jeopardising the good will which it has succeeded in establishing, both with the farming community, and with its own employees; but the Bill must bring up to date the legislative framework within which the Corporation operates.
Therefore, we define the Corporation's responsibilities to contract for the sugar beet coming from the acreage of sugar beet authorised by the Government at the Annual Review, on the terms defined at that review. We are also making provision to enable Ministers to continue certain incentive payments—they may not necessarily be the same as at present, but


the principle will be the same—the purpose of which is to promote and encourage economy and efficiency in the undertaking. It is made clear in the Bill that payments of this kind will be related to the achievement of steadily rising standards of efficiency and economy.
I have used the word "Ministers" since, in such matters as price, acreage, research, education, the appointment of Government directors and the efficiency of the British Sugar Corporation, I share responsibility with the Secretary of State for Scotland. Briefly, responsibility for the purchase and treatment of beet sugar by the Corporation is shared by us jointly, while responsibility for its disposal and for the financial aspects lie with me.
I would say a word about market-sharing arrangements. Provision is made to continue the present market-sharing arrangements, which are necessary if the Government are to carry out the obligations to sugar beet producers, and if the Corporation is to be assured of a market for its refined sugar. These arrangements have been in force for a considerable time and seem to have worked well. The Bill empowers the Minister to modify the arrangements that have been come to if—I quote from the Bill
at any time, after consulting the parties to the agreement, he considers it necessary to do so in the interests of users and consumers of sugar in the United Kingdom.
Market-sharing arrangements, however carefully devised, may, in time, operate against the public interest. It is essential that consumers should be able to come to the Minister if they feel that the consumers' interest is jeopardised, knowing that he has powers to put the matter right.
Let me say something about prices. When the statutory price control of sugar ended with derationing, the Minister of Food and the refiners entered into an agreement by which the latter bound themselves to regulate their margins according to a formula based on up-to-date investigations. The refiners have now offered to give my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer an undertaking that they will continue to regulate their margins under free market conditions. The formula that they have suggested has been very carefully scrutinised and examined by the Treasury, who say that it is likely to throw up results which are virtually identical with the existing

agreement. I understand that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with the agreement of the refiners, is willing, in due course, to place a copy of this agreement in the Library should the House wish it.
For my part, I am grateful to the refiners for their helpful initiative in this matter, because I think that the solutions proposed for regulating prices under free market conditions will overcome what is technically a difficult problem. I am satisfied that this arrangement will safeguard fully the interest both of consumers and of other users of sugar in this country.

Mr. Sidney Dye: The right hon. Gentleman said that this would regulate prices under free market conditions. Does he really mean that?

Mr. Amory: I am sorry. I was perhaps going a little too quickly. I am grateful to the hon. Member for calling my attention to this. What it does is to regulate the margin to cover the refining costs. It is the refiners' margin.

Mr. Dye: But there is practically a monopoly, is there not?

Mr. Amory: My hon. Friend will be glad to go into that at a later stage. I will do so now if the hon. Gentleman wishes it. I do not think that it alters the position. This agreement regulates the margin that all the refiners take on the refining processes that they carry out. [HON. MEMBERS: "Where is private enterprise?"] If I get the meaning of that question aright, I reply that when we have found something that works we do not take too doctrinaire a view of it.
I should like to say, finally, as I said at the beginning of my speech, that the history of legislation on sugar in this House shows that it has been largely a history of agreed legislation to which each party has contributed in turn. The proposals which I am now submitting to the House are proposals which have been devised in that spirit, and in an attempt to devise sensible and permanent arrangements for the sugar industry on lines which are broadly acceptable to everyone.
Taken as a whole, these arrangements meet, I believe, the desire of the House for a framework within which the Government can implement their undertakings to the Commonwealth and to our own growers while getting rid of these special difficulties in the way of restoring


to importers and manufacturers the freedom to trade competitively without irksome restrictions, thus assisting the reopening of the London Sugar Market and assisting London in recovering its preeminent position in the international sugar trade.
If, as I confidently hope, these proposals become law, they will, I am satisfied, fully protect the interests of users and consumers of sugar. It is certainly my desire that we should proceed with the task of the examination and, if possible, the further improvement of this Bill with the firm intention of producing a statute of which the whole House will approve.

4.35 p.m.

Mr. Frederick Willey: The right hon. Gentleman the tripartite Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, through his variegated experience in the present Administration, has, I am sure, earned the respect of many Members of both sides of the House. That is why that I am sure I am speaking for them all when I say that we earnestly hoped to have seen him elevated to a position less onerous and less vulnerable.
We are all very sorry that the Chancellor of the Exchequer's understandable desire to bolt has upset the applecart of the Government's shuffle, but it places me in a difficulty, because I am not anxious to say anything to prejudice the right hon. Gentleman. The seat which he occupies
at present is a very hot one. In the Cabinet game of musical chairs his is the chair which is often whipped from under him. His predecessor, the Minister of Food,
with an almost audible sigh of relief, slipped into the Home Office just in time. His predecessor the Minister of Agriculture was not quite so lucky. The chair was whipped from under him and down he went with an awful bump, and we are all very sorry for him.
In fact, the history of the Tory Party is littered—

Mr. J. K. Vaughan-Morgan: Get on with the Bill.

Mr. Willey: That remark is, of course, understandable from the hon. Gentleman, who knows the contemptible way in which his party treats its Ministers of Agriculture. The Tory Party is littered

with the corpses of Ministers of Agriculture. If we are hardy enough to look into their faces, we see that they are not only shadowed by doubt but lit by revelation. They have always been discarded and cut down in their prime just as they realised that Tory dogma of unrestrained, free profit by middlemen is incompatible with a sound agricultural policy. This has happened time after time. I do not want it to happen to the right hon Gentleman.
This incompatibility, this fundamental contradiction, is the background to the matter we are discussing today—sugar marketing. Let me say at once that the right hon. Gentleman's proposals could, of course, have been far worse. In so far as he makes substantial concessions to those of us who are Socialists, I welcome them. He knows that it is absolute nonsense to talk about free enterprise in sugar marketing. He knows that he and many of his hon. Friends talked a lot of mischievous nonsense during the General Election about rationing and controls. He and his hon. Friends need to be thick-skinned not to be embarrassed when the Government and the right hon. Gentleman come to the House and, under Clause 27, ask for full powers of price control, and, under other Clauses, ask for full powers of allocation, and import and export controls.
In so far as this is a confession of Tory failure, and in so far as this is open acknowledgment of Tory deceit of the electorate, we are magnanimous. We are not going to discourage the right hon. Gentleman from repenting. What disturbs me is that he appears in sackcloth and ashes, and yet uses all his ingenuity to devise what he regards as moderate scope for sin. It is as though a man, on economic grounds, discarded three of his four mistresses, and then appeared before us as a self-virtuous moralist.
Before the war, the sugar beet industry was a protected subsidised monopoly, and the Conservative Party in 1936, for all practical purposes, nationalised the industry. That is why we have not had any very great tribute paid to the industry today. It nationalised the industry except for one not unimportant aberration. This nationalised industry was obliged to retain private capital, and a very complex, comprehensive piece of machinery was established solely to guarantee profits in perpetuity to the shareholders.

Major H. Legge-Bourke: If the hon. Gentleman said that this industry was nationalised in 1936, why did the Labour Party agree, in its programme of 1950, that it would nationalise it?

Mr. James Griffiths: To complete the job.

Mr. Willey: All we propose to do, and I am sure that we have the sympathy of the hon. Gentleman, is to complete the job. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Mr. T. Williams) said during the debate in 1936, the Government created
a refined mixture of subsidised, nationalised, monopolised, sugar and Treasury finance."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 10th February, 1936; Vol. 308, c. 608.]
This "refined mixture" provided a comfortable feather bed for a specially protected, special privileged group of shareholders—rentiers par excellence.
In particular, it safeguarded the position of Messrs. Tate and Lyle. When the State decided to protect and to support the sugar beet industry, Mr. Charles Lyle said that he intended—and I quote him:
… to go into sugar beet also for my own purposes and to take my share of the plunder.
He carried out his intention. In fact, today Messrs. Tate and Lyle have a very substantial shareholding in the British Sugar Corporation. However, since the Sugar Industry Act, 1942, this industry has been virtually under full public control. The farmer receives a guaranteed price, and the British Sugar Corporation has processed and produced the sugar as a national corporation. This has been especially so since Sir Alan Saunders has been the chairman. Of course, he is a Government appointee. He is put there by the Government to see that the public interest governs the action of the Corporation.
As this is a nationalised industry, I want to say a few words about its remarkable record of efficiency and success. I can understand the embarrassment of the Minister. I am sure that he is obliged to me for doing it. I can do what he finds it difficult to do.

Mr. Amory: I hope that I shall be able to join with the hon. Gentleman in his tribute. I do not know; I shall wait and see.

Mr. Willey: The Corporation has carried out its £9 million scheme for reconstruction and modernisation, substantially financed from reserves, a year before it was planned to complete it. The last annual report says that in spite of the difficulties of the 1954–55 campaign, the yield was one-third of a ton above average. Whatever efficiency tests one cares to apply—whether it is manpower, absenteeism, labour turnover, coal consumption or output—the Corporation acting as a national Corporation has a remarkable record.
I am very glad to add this, because it was not always so. In the field of research and experimentation, in many respects, we can claim to lead the world Meanwhile, the shareholders, who, as everyone knows, have had nothing at all to do with this—indeed, the complicated provisions of the Bill are partly designed to prevent them having anything to do with it—have slumbered contentedly, receiving a modest 5 per cent. in place of the 4 per cent. guaranteed by the Government.
Why cannot the Government recognise reality and acknowledge the achievements of the Corporation and transform it into a proper public utility, performing, as it does, a national service? The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the incentive provisions of Clause 19, but surely he recognises that the farce of the Treasury agreement of 1952, of sharing economies between the Treasury and the shareholders, should be ended. Why cannot we recognise the splendid record of the Corporation and provide that all the money should go back into the industry, that it should go back to those who are actually working in the industry who should have the benefit of the substantial improvements which they have carried out in the past few years?
There is another very important reason why the Corporation should be brought under full public ownership. The Minister mentioned sugar refining. Sugar refining is an absolute monopoly governed by the Sugar Refining Agreement of 1937. Not only are prices fixed, not only is the amount of sugar that the Corporation can refine determined, but the refiners and the Corporation carve up the country and each has its own distribution areas within which it has exclusive marketing rights. My right hon. Friend the


Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) says something about Tory freedom. This, of course, is an absolute monopoly, but I concede at once that when the Agreement was modified in 1953 it became substantially better from the point of view of the Corporation.
I have no reason to doubt that the Corporation is now satisfied with the Agreement though, with all deference to "Mr. Cube," I should have thought that the Corporation ought to be allowed to produce specialities, like other refiners. But this is the point: the Corporation ought to be like Caesar's wife. When agreement is negotiated between the refiners and the Corporation, the refiners should not have a substantial shareholding within the Corporation. They themselves should not have a substantial shareholding in the Corporation with which they agree to divide the trade and the country. That is quite unjustifiable. It is done only to appease a few clamorous back-benchers and to ensure that a very limited number of people, a very limited interest, should continue to get a rake-off from a nationalised industry without contributing anything. It unfortunately arouses suspicion where there is probably no ground for it, but while they are there the shareholders are, as it were, a Trojan horse.
It would be far better to say that here we have the British sugar beet industry built up and reliant upon financial assisttance, State protected, and playing an important part in our national economy; its production necessarily determined by the national need; let us rid it of all these complicated provisions and bureaucracy and allow it to be what it ought to be—simply a public utility under private ownership.
What is obvious about home-produced sugar is equally obvious about imported sugar. I can readily understand what has happened. I have stigmatised the Minister, and I stigmatised his predecessor before he went to the Home Office. The House will remember the barges on the estuaries and rivers on the Continent which were chock-full of sugar and which, presumably, are still full. The House will remember the dumping of sugar abroad at the expense of the taxpayer, the novelty of slashing the food subsidies which aided the British housewife and subsidising the foreign housewife instead—even the Russian housewife. The House

will remember the inexplicable conversion of assumed profits into substantial losses.
I remember the Joint Parliamentary Secretary, when we last discussed this matter, saying:
I should, first, like to clear up the £l1 million deficit on sugar. That was for sugar sold abroad."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th July, 1955; Vol. 543, c. 1835.]
That is so staggering that I cannot believe it; but I am sure that the Prime Minister, reading the OFFICIAL REPORT, appreciating the meticulous accuracy of the hon. Member for Sunderland, North, if not that of the Joint Parliamentary Secretary, called for the right hon. Gentleman and said, "You have got to get out of the sugar business"; and so we have the Government announcing that they intend to bring to an end State trading in sugar.
They are not doing anything of the sort. They are transforming the form and limiting the field of State purchase. They are not doing what they set out to do, because they are bound to acknowledge the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement. Nevertheless, it is very disturbing for everyone in the Commonwealth that the Government should take this action and go so far—go to the very limits to which they can go—before they have made it quite clear that they intend to renew the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement.
Let us look at the position. We are to have a nationalised board, appointees of Whitehall with the approval of the Treasury. This is the machinery which the right hon. Gentleman is creating. He knows that basically and essentially there is little place at all for private enterprise in the sugar trade; that for whatever businessmen may be sent "combing"—to use the classical word of "Britain Strong and Free"—they cannot be allowed to go combing for sugar. Not only have we the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, which obliges us to buy 1,600,000 tons at an agreed price each year at a fixed formula, but we have also the wider obligations of the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement. We have the International Sugar Agreement with its floor and ceiling prices, and rigid system of quotas varied by the International Sugar Council to maintain a stable price for sugar.
All this is very desirable and in accord with the Labour Party's policy to guarantee to the producer that security on which full production will depend. But in this


sort of world there is little scope for "Operation combing." Why not recognise the realities? If we do recognise the realities, the simplest and most economical way of trading in sugar is the way in which we are now trading. The right hon. Gentleman has mentioned the trade. In fact the trade operates now. The sugar brokers obtain the sugar, they are the procurement agents, but their profits are controlled, and they do not like that.
All this was discussed by the
Estimates Committee. The official spokesmen of the Ministry of Food made it clear that in their opinion the proposals which the right hon. Gentleman is now bringing to the House would be much more complicated than the present arrangements, and that is the fact. And may I say in parenthesis that this excuse about goods containing sugar is a flimsy excuse? These imports are practically negligible, and there is no difficulty in keeping them negligible either.
Let us examine what the hight hon. Gentleman proposes to do. As he has explained, the Sugar Board buys at a fixed price. The
price is determined by the Commonwealth Agreement. As he has explained, it is prohibited from handling the sugar unless the right hon. Gentleman so directs. It has to sell forthwith, in the words of the Bill,
at prices conforming as nearly as may be to those which, in the opinion of the Board, the sugar would command if sold, at the same place and (apart from price) on the same terms, by any other person in the normal course of trade"—
whatever that means. That is what happens. As the right hon. Gentleman explained, it makes no difference to the internal market. As the White Paper says:
The internal market for sugar in the United Kingdom forms a unified price system …
and so it will remain if this Bill becomes an Act. That is why the right hon. Gentleman has had to seek price control powers under Clause 27. But, to avoid a subsidy, we have to have very complex and complicated administrative arrangements to make sure that we take back from the traders and refiners the difference of price between the price at which they sold the sugar, the world price determined under the Clause to which I have referred, and the Commonwealth price.
To make this even more complex, they have to recover the deficiency payment to the British Sugar Corporation. To make it even more complex still, a surcharge has to be paid on all sugar, whether it be from the Commonwealth, or foreign countries or home produced. So we shall have a battery of accountants and calculating machines to calculate the sums and—in spite of the cover that it is done by Customs and Excise—a hoard of officials to levy the surcharge. In addition to all this, we have to have the necessary import licensing control, because of the position obtaining under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement and the International Sugar Agreement, and because of the problem of balance of payments. The Chancellor has learned his lesson about feedingstuffs. Marginal sugar supplies are dollar supplies, so that above the complicated administrative arrangements we have to have this additional import licensing control.
All this has been done because, being obliged to accept—and may I say very properly accept—the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, the right hon. Gentleman then has to provide an opportunity for as unrestrained as possible private profit so as, according to the White Paper, to allow the trade to "carry out its normal functions." The one thing the trade cannot do is carry out its normal functions, not with the industry bound by these agreements. But under the false myth of competitive buying, the right hon. Gentleman has used all his initiative to contrive as wide a field as possible for private profit. The fact that he has given way to the merchants means that there will probably be increasing pressure; in fact, the right hon. Gentleman has already announced today that he has given way to such pressure.
This is bound to weaken confidence. It is bound—and this is a disturbing thing to affect confidence in the Commonwealth. It would be far better to retain the present Government responsibility and to make it clear—the right hon. Gentleman said nothing about it—that this country intends to renew the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement.

Mr. Amory: I should like to repeat what I did say. There is nothing in this Bill which affects in any way the fulfilment of obligations under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement. We have had


consultations with the producers representing the Commonwealth exporters, and we have made it perfectly clear to them that the position remains in the future as at present. The Government are responsible for fulfilling those obligations, and the Commonwealth exporters have said that they are entirely satisfied with the position.

Mr. Willey: I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman. That is some solace. But he has not said, in view of the disturbance this Bill has caused, that it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government to renew the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement.

Mr. Holt: The Agreement is not due to be renewed until 1959. How does the hon. Member know that the housewives will be prepared to go on paying an excessive price for sugar?

Mr. Willey: The hon. Gentleman, in his solitary isolation, can speak for the Liberal benches. I am speaking for what I regard as the broad interests of this country and the Commonwealth.
I have a further very grave objection to this Bill. It is a matter about which I have repeatedly warned the House. It is the policy of the present Government, as it was in the nineteen-thirties, to provide aid to the farmer wherever he may be, at home and abroad, at the direct expense of the housewife. Under their food subsidy policy the Coalition Government and the Labour Government paid people equally by way of food subsidies, and raised the money differentially by taxation. The present Government deliberately set out to destroy that pattern, and unfortunately they are following the same course today.
Through the consumer price, the subsidy element in sugar is now to be borne by rich and poor alike across the grocer's counter. There are two elements of subsidy in sugar. The first is the protection of the British sugar beet industry. That is something which is done on national and strategic grounds. It ought to be raised by taxation. It is quite wrong to raise it by a poll tax on everybody who buys sugar. That, I remind the hon. Gentleman, was the view of the Select Committee on Estimates, who suggested that this element ought to be borne on the Votes of the

Agricultural Departments. If on national grounds we decide to support agriculture, the sum used for that support should be clearly recognisable and known and it should come out of general taxation.
Equally important, in the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement there is an element for colonial welfare and improvement. Again, it is quite wrong that the rich and poor housewives should contribute the same amount over the grocer's counter towards colonial welfare and improvement. This is a subsidy element. It accounts substantially for the difference in price between the Commonwealth sugar and world sugar on the free market. This element ought not to be raised by a poll tax on rich and poor alike whereby those with larger families pay much more than those without families. It ought to come out of general taxation. This is another example of the retrogressive fiscal policy of the Government.
For those reasons, we are very properly disturbed at many of the things that the right hon. Gentleman is doing within the terms of the Bill. We recognise, of course, that some of the things he is doing, whilst objectionable to those who sit behind him, are not unwelcome. We do not mind him discarding ancient Tory shibboleths. We do not mind him acknowledging the achievements of the British Sugar Corporation. We support his acknowledgment of the obligations of the present Commonwealth Agreement. Nevertheless, we regret that, in so doing, the right hon. Gentleman should in the first place use his ingenuity to preserve the element of private capital in what is essentially a nationalised industry. We regret very much that he should disturb greatly the confidence of the Commonwealth Sugar producing countries in the Government by setting up this machinery, ingeniously devised, to allow as great scope as possible for private profit.

Mr. Amory: It would be unfortunate if I allowed the statement to go out that there was any interference by the Bill, because there is not. It is not interfering in the smallest way with the fulfilment of the Government's obligation under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement.

Mr. J. Griffiths: The right hon. Gentleman said that the Bill does not interfere in any way with the fulfilment of the


existing Agreement. Is he equally sure that it will not in any way interfere with, or influence, the renewal of the Agreement when it comes to an end?

Mr. Amory: The two things are entirely distinct. The Bill provides purely an alternative method of fulfilling the obligations under the Sugar Agreement, otherwise it has no reference at all to the terms of that agreement.

Mr. Willey: We have conceded for the purposes of this argument that the Government are accepting the obligations of the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement—that is not being brought into question. What we are saying—we are surely entitled to say it in view of the steps being taken under the Bill—is that this is disturbing confidence in the Government's intention to renew that Agreement.

Mr. Amory: I wish the hon. Member could develop that point. I cannot see even the smallest grounds for that view, nor do I believe that Commonwealth exporters see the smallest grounds for it.

Mr. Willey: It would have been quite easy to continue the present arrangements and to have accepted the direct Government responsibility for the importation of sugar. That would have been the best way of continuing to safeguard the Comomnwealth Sugar Agreement. That has not been done.

Mr. Amory: That is an expression of the hon. Gentleman's view. So far, he has produced no ground whatever for saying that the Bill should in any way shake the confidence of the Commonwealth exporter.

Mr. Willey: Then I will proceed to the grounds. What the right hon. Gentleman is doing, by complicated administrative arrangements, is to allow the merchants the fullest possible opportunity to make profit whilst accepting the Commonwealth Agreement. That is disturbing if one's primary object is, by the formula devised, to maintain the stability of the price of sugar. There is no other conclusion. That is why I say the right hon. Gentleman's action is disturbing.
In short, what the Minister has done is to appease a very limited number of vested interests. He has created the impression that he is not very enthusiastic

about the fundamental principle behind the developments which have taken place in sugar marketing, which is the devising of machinery to maintain a stable price. The right hon. Gentleman has taken another opportunity unfairly to penalise the housewife.
The sugar price contains these two elements: it contains protection and support for our domestic sugar beet industry, which is done on national and strategic grounds, and it contains an element of support for Colonial welfare and improvement.

The Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations (Mr. Douglas Dodds-Parker): The Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations (Mr. Douglas Dodds-Parker)indicated dissent.

Mr. Willey: It is no good the hon. Gentleman nodding his head. He ought to know that that is an element. It is quite wrong that the burden of protection for an industry on national grounds and the burden of colonial improvement should be passed on to the housewife as an indirect tax.

Mr. Amory: That, again, is not something that arises under the Bill. Under the present arrangements, the Government recover their costs through the average price for sugar in this country.

Mr. Wiley: How it arises is this. Up to the time of the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor sugar bore a subsidy. The right hon. Gentleman has abolished that subsidy. He now suffers a trading loss on selling sugar to consumers abroad, but he does not suffer any loss on his sales in the domestic market. What he is doing under the Bill is to make those provisions permanent so that the retail price of sugar bears both those elements. The Minister is entitled to his own views, but I regard that as unfair to the housewife. For these overriding reasons, whilst we accept a good deal of what the right hon. Gentleman—I do not think he claims any great virtue for it—has found unavoidable in the Bill, nevertheless we must oppose it.

5.10 p.m.

Major H. Legge-Bourke: One of the duties of the Opposition in this House, I understand, is to oppose, and I should have said that the hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. F. Willey) had that duty mainly in his mind today, because he was determined to oppose at all costs a Bill with which he has very little sympathy.
I should like to take up the hon. Gentleman on one of the remarks he made earlier in his speech. That was his reference to my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Sir T. Dugdale), the previous holder of the office of Minister of Agriculture. The hon. Gentleman referred to "his chair being whipped from under him," which seemed to me to be just about as cheap a remark as some of those made by the right hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Gaitskell) to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his speech on the Budget. It seems to me that if hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite have nothing better to say than that, they might just as well leave it out because it does not increase the respect for this place outside, and, heaven knows, it has sunk low from time to time. [Interruption.] If the right hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) wishes to interrupt me, perhaps he will stand up.

Mr. E. Shinwell: I am not asking the hon. Gentleman; I am telling him. Do not be so mealy-mouthed; it is not a tea party, with the dear vicar in the chair.

Major Legge-Bourke: No, but the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Easing-ton is certainly a master in this particular art, which I was condemning, and I certainly would not have expected him to make any other comment than the one he has just made.
If I may now come back to the speech of the hon. Member for Sunderland, North, in his remarks about my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, he referred to "his chair being whipped from under him," when the hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that it was an extremely honourable course which my right hon. Friend took on that occasion. No question of having his chair pulled from under him arose, but simply the question of being let down and my right hon. Friend decided to take the responsibility. It was very cheap of the hon. Member to make that remark.

Mr. Shinwell: You forced him to resign.

Major Legge-Bourke: The hon. Gentleman also accused my right hon. Friend of not having given any credit to the British Sugar Corporation, but, in the course of his speech, he did give credit to it, and it is certainly not the wish of anybody

on this side of the House to do anything other than express admiration for the way in which the Corporation has worked. I know that from my own constituency, which is very considerably interested in it, and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary would say the same thing. We both have sugar beet factories in our constituencies, and the services which
the Corporation has rendered to the area have been very considerable. Although now and again there may be disputes about how the sugar content is arrived at, I think that on the whole the Corporation has rendered valuable service.
Hon. Members opposite try to pull our legs about having introduced a semi-nationalised industry, but let them not forget that their own policy was to do nothing at all for agriculture unless and until they had first nationalised the land. [Interruption.] Yes, it is true, and the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Mr. T. Williams) would not support any sensible marketing organisation unless and until nationalisation of the land had taken place. The policy of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite is all or nothing; they have to have complete nationalisation of the land or leave things free. To have something like the British Sugar Corporation, even in the form it is today, when perhaps it is neither one thing nor the other, absolutely appals them. They do not like the idea. They like to go the whole hog and put it in the straitjacket of nationalisation.
What would happen if they did? If my right hon. Friend adopted that policy, would the price of sugar go up with the same rapidity as the price of coal has gone up since the nationalisation of the coal industry? Has there been any greater contribution to the overheads of the British Sugar Corporation than the increased price of fuel from the nationalised industries? We had much better leave the Corporation in conditions in which it has been able to do a very good job. Do not let us upset the machinery of that industry simply for the sake of following some political theory.
It was perfectly obvious from the closing remarks of the hon. Member for Sunderland, North that what they really want to do is to try to make out that they object to any reduction in the consumer food subsidies, but let them not forget


that it was a Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer who first started reducing the food subsidies and who put ceilings on the prices of consumer food subsidies. It is a fair point to make that we are ruthlessly opposed as to whether we believe in a free economy or a Socialist economy, but let not the hon. Gentleman try to be sanctimonious or self-righteous about consumer food subsidies and what the housewife has to pay, because the first brake that was put upon them was by means of a Socialist reduction in the amount of the subsidy. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor was quite right to do what he did, although personally I feel that the hangover from the policy of the late Sir Stafford Cripps is rather too lasting for my liking.
I certainly welcome this Bill in so far as it means the end of State trading in sugar. I certainly believe that if we can eliminate the State trading losses, it will be all to the good and will help our own people. To come back to the point about consumer food subsidies, is it really worth while for the people to have high consumer subsidies while the State is losing a lot of money, the bill for which has to be met by high taxation? If we want to get back to realities, and I suppose everybody does, surely it is wise to try to eliminate State trading, especially when that State trading results in losses?
I do not want to deal at great length with the Commonwealth side of this matter, beyond saying that I accept the assurance of my right hon. Friend that this Bill does not interfere or upset in any way the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, nor does it upset in any way the obligation of the Minister, as far as the home sugar industry is concerned but there are a few points arising out of Clause 17 and the later Clauses about which I should like to have some reassurance.
In particular, when we compare Clause 17 with the provisions contained in the Act of 1936, and particularly in Section (5) of that Act, we see that there is a very considerable difference in the new arrangements. I am prepared to accept from my right hon. Friend, if he can give it, an assurance that this change will not make the slightest difference to growers. I hope it will not, but I would emphasise

that, as I read the Bill, there has been a change in the method by which my right hon. Friend decides, under Clause 17 (4), the measure of guarantee to growers. Whereas the 1936 Act talked about determining the acreage to be grown, this Bill refers to the quantity. Of course, the Bill goes on to provide—and I think that perhaps this may be the saving clause in subsection (6)—that the Ministers are bound to—
exercise their powers under this section in the light of the conclusions of the reviewing Ministers from reviews held by them under section two of the Agriculture Act, 1947.
That is a reference to the famous occasion each year, which is of such great interest to the hon. Member for Wednesbury (Mr. S. N. Evans)—the Price Review. I take it that it means that, although on the wording of subsection (4) the Minister may quite easily be able to vary the arrangements, as compared with the 1936 Act, in fact subsection (6) brings him back to the obligation not to get away from the guarantee. I am sure that it would have been of very great concern to me and other hon. Members if that assurance had not been given.
There is one other point which arises from this part of the Bill, and that is that under Section 15 (1) of the Sugar Industry (Reorganisation) Act, 1936, the Commissioners were entitled to make supplementary payments to the Corporation out of money provided by Parliament in the case where paucity of the crop, due to adverse farming conditions, led to a shortfall on the standard quantity. At that time the standard quantity was 560,000 tons a year. I am not quite sure whether Clause 19 of the present Bill is meant to replace Section 15 of the 1936 Act. It refers to agreements for incentive payments to the Corporation. That was not so much an incentive payment, as I understood it, but rather a sort of payment that the Minister himself agreed to make at the end of last year's harvest in cases where the crops were unharvestable. As long as the Minister has the right, through the existing review machinery under the Agriculture Act, 1947, to deal with this, there is no need to worry, but I shall be sorry to see a provision, such as was covered by Section 15 (1) of the old Act, being altogether removed from the present Bill, unless there is some other means of covering that sort of contingency.
The part of the Bill which the hon. Member for Sunderland, North seemed to like most was the more Socialistic part. That is the part which I dislike most, and what I dislike most is that today the Minister is in rather a different position from that which he occupied when the Sugar Industry (Reorganisation) Act, 1936, became law. Today we have the Annual Price Review and the guarantees of the Agriculture Act, 1947, so that every year the Minister is in the position of having to act as one of the negotiators of an agreement as to price and yet at the same time his representatives are negotiators of the price agreement with the National Farmers' Union at the Annual Price Review.

Mr. Amory: The Annual Price Review is not really an annual negotiation. It is a review of the prices. We consult with the industry, but the responsibility for fixing prices lies with the Government.

Major Legge-Bourke: I appreciate that, and perhaps my careless wording gave a wrong impression, but I think that the Minister would at least agree that in 1936 his predecessors were not in that position and there is a slight danger of the Minister having the right to make a final decision and at the same time being the arbiter of whether that decision is right. None of us likes that. It tends to give too much power and to centralise power too much, and I hope that some safeguards can there be introduced.
The abolition of the Commissioners under the old Act has not made it easier to eliminate that risk. For that reason, in some ways it is a pity that the Commissioners have gone. That has tended to give the Minister's Department a great deal more power than they already possess, and I am never in favour of giving Ministries more power. If legislation has to be introduced, I would sooner it divested Ministries of power rather than gave it to them. I think that my right hon. Friend agrees with that, but occasionally we have to make exceptions to the rule, and this is one of those cases.
I accept the reassurance that this will not upset the Commonwealth Agreement, nor make any difference to the ordinary grower of sugar beet. I hope that my right hon. Friend will put my mind at rest on the points which I have raised, and I wish the Bill well.

5.25 p.m.

Mr. Gordon Walker: The hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) made a rather stuffy beginning to his speech and gave a pompous and unnecessary rebuke to my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. F. Willey). I ask him whether he thinks that throwing pennies across the table is a dignified way of behaving in the House of Commons.

Major Legge-Bourke: No more than when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison), as Foreign Secretary, suggested that the Tory Party wanted war.

Mr. Gordon Walker: That is a most unjustified and monstrous assertion. Whatever my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North may have said pales into insignificance beside such an outrageous statement; and of course when we were in office the hon. and gallant Gentleman used to say the most unpleasant, appalling, sharp and bitter things about us; but we did not mind, because they had no effect at all.
The hon. and gallant Gentleman made his main speech around the question of the abolition of State trading, and that is why he particularly welcomed the Bill. But that is only half of the question. The question is what is put in the place of State trading when it is abolished, and the hon. and gallant Gentleman began to tumble to the realisation that a great deal of bureaucracy, unnecessary control and complexity has been put into the Bill, because the Government have decided to put this particular substitute in place of State trading.
We are, of course, not discussing the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement today. The merits of that are quite distinct from the merits or demerits of the Bill. We all want the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement. I was recently in the British West Indies, and it is clear that the whole economy there depends on the maintenance of sugar production. The Commonwealth Sugar Agreement is in being and would continue in being if the Bill were defeated.
The Bill is therefore only one way of implementing the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, and it is a very bad way. It


involves unnecessary complexities, rigidities, unnecessary Government interference with that economy, unnecessary aid to private enterprise and, as I hope to prove, is against the true interests in the long run of the Commonwealth and developing Commonwealth production. I will try to substantiate those points. The defects in the Bill seemed inherent in its very purpose from the beginning. It would not be possible to take them out by amending the Bill. The Bill has inherent defects, because its whole purpose is to combine Commonwealth bulk purchase agreements with a free market and private profit, and those two things cannot be combined.
Bulk purchase agreements on any scale, like this, destroy the very conditions which are necessary to the proper functioning of private enterprise. Private enterprise presupposes a free, competitive market, and, as the Bill shows, if a Commonwealth bulk purchase agreement is made, that free competitive market disappears and there is no way of saving it. One can pretend to resuscitate it and resuscitate a substitute, but the free competitive market disappears.
The world market is quite artificial. The right hon. Gentleman referred to it as a "so-called world market." The Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, the International Sugar Agreement and American Sugar preferences mean an end of the world market. The world price is determined by marginal quantities of sugar coming on to the market often at dumping prices. The home market is equally artificial because the Sugar Board and the British Sugar Corporation have the entire monopoly for determining supplies coming on to the market, and this is apparent in the Bill.
There is an extraordinary Clause in the Bill, Clause 1 (5), which is the sole reference in the whole Bill to the idea of a free market. It gives a most extraordinary definition of market or market price. It says:
The Sugar Board shall sell sugar … at prices conforming as nearly as may be to those which, in the opinion of the Board, the sugar would command if sold, at the same place and (apart from price) on the same terms, by any other person in the normal course of trade.
In other words, the price is determined by someone who imagines what it would be if everything were different. It is a con-

tradiction in terms. It says that there is no other way of reaching prices except by deciding what the price would be if everything else were different. If that is a free market, then I have never heard of such a chaotic and illogical description. But it is inherent in the whole of the Bill—the whole Bill starts with that idiotic concept.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Harmar Nicholls): I only intervene to say that there are enough complexities in the Bill without the right hon. Gentleman introducing others. The Bill says that, having all the facts in front of it, the Board would use its judgment, just as would any business house.

Mr. Gordon Walker: I was always told that a free market was the impersonal play of the forces of supply and demand, but we are now told that it is something in which the biggest interest concerned judges things as if everything were different from what it is, and comes to a decision which is the free price. All the troubles in this Bill really come from this attempted, artificial respiration of a defunct market. It is this doctrinal idea that we must have a market even where the market is impossible which has led to all the complexities to which my hon. Friend has referred.
The right hon. Gentleman said that the new system was simpler. It may possibly be simpler than things are at present, but it is not as simple as it could be. If it were done simply and straightforwardly, we would get away from all these complexities, Government controls and the rest. A lot of the Bill is in contradiction to the most cherished beliefs of the Conservatives—or their pretended beliefs. The Bill is full of physical controls—absurd, detailed, unnecessary physical controls—Ministerial directions to allocate quantities, to fix surcharges and drawbacks, and actually to fix the price to the consumer. These are very extreme physical controls—the sort of thing Conservatives have always denounced.
The Measure is peppered with penalties. New offences are created right and left, quite unnecessarily. Clauses 16, 26, 27 and others are full of new penalties, for which there is no need but which have to be created because the Government are trying to effect this doctrinal salvation of


the free market in impossible circumstances. The Bill is certainly based on the idea that the gentlemen of Whitehall know best. They have all sorts of reserve powers, direct and indirect powers. If Conservatives have read the Bill properly, it really amazes me that they have not risen in revolt against these physical controls.
However, from the point of view of the interests involved, they have a considerable quid pro quo. Their profits become uncontrolled, which is a very considerable gain. They continue to have their subsidy and a monopoly in the home market, because the Bill specifically carries on this monstrous and indefensible carving up of the home market. It is extraordinary that the Minister can so calmly say that that carving up of markets is to continue with the authority of the State.
It is in restraint of trade—and it is intended to be in restraint of trade. It is amazing that such things can be put into a Bill. For instance, Clause 25 (1) says:
Any sugar refining agreement made after the passing of this Act, if it is approved by order of he Minister, shall have effect notwithstanding any rule of law relating to agreements in restraint of trade.
The very purpose of this Measure is to enable these things to be done in restraint of trade. It says so in so many words. The Minister can actually impose these carve-up agreements even if the people do not come to them themselves; another physical control of an extraordinary kind—although I do not think the party opposite will object, because the purpose is to set up a private monopoly backed by the power of the State.
It is said that this has gone on ever since the Sugar Industry Act, 1936, but to say that something wrong has gone on for a long time is no argument against getting rid of it. Indeed, it is an argument for righting the wrong as quickly as possible.

Mr. Amory: The right hon. Gentleman's party, when in office, did not get rid of it. I wonder that they object now.

Mr. Gordon Walker: We had rather a lot of things to do in the field of public enterprise in our time, but I have no doubt that we should have got rid of this by now. If the right hon. Gentleman will read our Election programmes he will realise that. We had much to do then,

and I would not put this in the same high priority as iron and steel and coal. It has a priority now, but if the Minister thinks that it is good that markets should be carved up for private enterprise, I hope that he will say so.
On this side, we say that in certain circumstances physical controls and the penalties which must go with them are necessary. Here they are not necessary. They come into the Bill only because of this attempt to preserve private profit and artificially to re-create the private market. The right hon. Gentleman tried to imply that this was the only way to carry out the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, but of the many ways there are of doing that, this is one of the worst. It would be perfectly possible to sweep away all of these complexities, physical controls, carving up of markets and the rest if the Government would accept that if we have a bulk purchase agreement it involves public enterprise in the home market. That is what they will not accept. That is why we have this extremely long, detailed and dangerous Bill.
It would be simple to set up one or perhaps two sugar boards or corporations which could buy up all the sugar from the Commonwealth and at home, operate the refineries and sell at the price necessary to cover costs. We would not then have all the drawbacks, rebates, surcharges, distribution payments, distribution repayments and three long, almost unintelligible Clauses. None would be in the least necessary.
All this fills me with alarm from the point of view of the policy of encouraging Commonwealth production and distribution. If it had been done in a simple way, with a single, or possibly two, sugar board, the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement would have fitted in with the greatest of ease. The Government, in choosing this method, are making it extremely difficult to fit in any Commonwealth agreements. If all this elaborate, complex, detailed Bill is needed to fit in one simple Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, it must fill with despondency all who have Commonwealth production at heart. If the Government make such a fuss of fitting this one agreement into the system, it is no wonder that they have torn up all the others.
It must be remembered that this is the sole survivor from the slaughter of the


innocents. The Government have been tearing up Commonwealth agreements all over the place. What is so disturbing is that something which could have been done easily is done in a most complex way, and that must throw doubt on the willingness and readiness of the Government to fit such agreements into our economy. The Bill will weaken our whole policy of the general encouragement of Commonwealth trade by longterm bulk agreements. The Government has put the doctrine of a free market before the policy of encouraging production in the Commonwealth.

5.40 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Holt: I have found two extraordinary inconsistencies in the debate. I am at a loss to understand how hon. Members can sit here and accept, on the one hand, the great desirability of Commonwealth Sugar Agreements and encouraging Commonwealth growers while accepting, on the other hand, the encouragement of the uneconomical growing of sugar beet in this country. Either we want to help the Commonwealth,
and in particular the West Indies, or we do not. If we do, then I can appreciate the view of some hon. Members that the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement—which in any case was signed in December, 1951, and is to continue until 1959, so we can do nothing about it—is a good thing.
On the other hand, bearing in mind the difficulties which these international agreements constantly meet, I am surprised at the continued great confidence in them. I am just as concerned as any other hon. Member to support any system which will try to keep prices as stable as possible, for I am certainly no advocate of a system in which prices, particularly those of raw materials, rush up and down in a higgledy-piggledy way, causing a great deal of trouble and inconvenience. Nevertheless, we are seeing the kind of problems which occur when we have these agreements. For instance, we see them in the International Wheat Agreement, which is putting a very great strain on relationships between America and Canada. There is, too, the trouble which is arising from the special American arrangements for cotton. I do not know how that problem will be solved, but when it is solved it will cause a great deal

of trouble to somebody. These international agreements were started with the best intentions but they have by no means proved that they are successful instruments for carrying out those intentions. It may be that they can be improved, but I have my doubts.
In opening the debate, the Minister described as something wonderful the
change which has taken place in the United Kingdom's purchases of sugar. We now buy 90 per cent. of our sugar from the Commonwealth, which is a complete reversal of the situation 30 years ago. When he describes it as wonderful he entirely ignores the disadvantages to consumers in Great Britain, who are now paying £40 a ton and more instead of about £26 a ton which they would pay at world prices. We cannot brush this lightly aside in the name of the Commonwealth and say it is marvellous.
I will not go further on this point because there is another aspect of the Bill to which I want to draw attention. I entirely agree with one point made by the hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. F. Willey)—if only one—who spoke for the official Opposition. That was his comment on the manner of dealing with deficits. I am opposed to these hole-in-the-corner methods of dealing with things which do not pay. For heaven's sake let us have them out in the open as a straight subsidy. If the Sugar Board and the Sugar Corporation are not to pay, let us have a straight subsidy which we can see in the Budget, so that we may know every year what it is costing us to carry out this policy of supporting the beet industry for agriculturists, on the one hand, or supporting the Commonwealth countries, particularly the West Indies, on the other hand. Let us know what it is costing us instead of trying to hide the whole thing through a surcharge so that nobody knows.

Mr. Amory: There will be no hiding. The accounts of the British Sugar Corporation and of the Sugar Board will be available, the latter being laid before the House, and will show quite clearly whether there has been a surplus or a deficit and how much.

Mr. Holt: I am very glad to hear that and I hope we shall study those accounts each year and decide whether it is worth the £30 million which it will probably cost us.
I have great respect for the Minister and I feel that this Bill is another indication that the Minister who is in charge of agriculture, fisheries and food, whoever he may be, is hopelessly overworked and has so much routine work to do that he can never sit back and examine carefully what his policy ought to be. I feel that if the Minister had had two or three months' holiday in the West Country—

Mr. J. Griffiths: The West Indies.

Mr. Holt: —by the end of that time—

Mr. Amory: I must tell the hon. Gentleman that up to that point I find myself in entire agreement with him.

Mr. Holt: I hope he will find himself in entire agreement with the remainder of what I say. I am sure he would have agreed with me if he had taken the holiday.
If, after such a holiday, he had been presented by the officers of his
Department with this Bill and a brief upon it, he would have been shocked that anyone had had the nerve to present it to him. I entirely agree with the right hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Gordon Walker) that this Bill is a complete denial of the beliefs of those Tory Members who from time to time say they believe in a free economy. I know that some of them do not believe in it; the hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) does not believe in it. Some of them, however, genuinely do believe in it and I can only conclude that they have not read the Bill.

Major Legge-Bourke: I certainly do not believe in the kind of free economy in which the hon. Member believes, which is throwing British agriculture to the wolves.

Mr. Holt: I cannot expect the hon. and gallant Member to agree with everything in which I believe. There are many Members of his party who go a great deal further than the tiny way he goes in the direction of a free economy and I cannot think that they have read the Bill. It is Socialism throughout, and I should have thought that hon. Members of the Labour Party would raise their voices with glee that a Conservative Government has introduced it. I cannot

believe that it is a Bill of which any Conservative Minister should be proud.
Let us consider the sugar beet industry of this country. I am not an agriculturalist and do not pretend to know the wisdom or otherwise of growing sugar beet. All I know is that it is uneconomic compared with growing cane sugar. There is no dispute about that. As the Minister said earlier, sugar has always been in politics, even back to the 18th century, in the days when the Quakers first tried to grow sugar beet because they disagreed with the growing of sugar by slaves in the West Indies. It is still in politics, perhaps more now than ever, and the Bill will certainly have repercussions.
One of the problems of considerable social concern over the last 12 months has been the influx of immigrants from the West Indies, particularly from Jamaica. Will this Bill help that? Is there anything in the Bill which will encourage the buying of more sugar by this country from the West
Indies? Nothing at all, as far as I
can see. The quotas have been fixed under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement of 1951 and, as I see it, there is no likelihood of their being increased. The production of sugar beet in this country has risen, as can be seen by anyone who looks at the White Paper, "Annual Review and Determination of Guarantees, 1955," Cmd. 9406. According to Appendix I, the acreage under sugar beet has gone up about 30 per cent.; the tonnage has gone up 70 per cent. I gather there has been some increased efficiency. Whether there has been increased cost, I do not know, but there has been increased efficiency on an acreage basis. Also, on the previous page of that White Paper, the statement is made that the Government wish to see the present sugar beet acreage maintained, and then they give us the price figure for the year.
I should have thought, quite apart from any question of a doctrine of economics, that if we really want to help the West Indies, if we are really concerned with the fact that so many West Indians are coming to this country, and with all the problems which go with that, in view of the fact that we require to grow more feedingstuffs in this country


and that sugar beet are merely taking up land which presumably could be used for other things—

Mr. Dye: The hon. Member is completely wrong there.

Mr. Walter Elliot (Glasgow, Kelvin-grove): Mr. Walter Elliot (Glasgow, Kelvin-grove)rose—

Mr. Holt: Will the right hon. Member allow me to continue, because I have a very interesting document here called "Change is our Ally." Possibly the right hon. Member has not read it. It says:
Nowadays many of the most efficient farmers find it quite unnecessary to introduce a root crop into the rotation, and there is good evidence that the cereal acreage can be kept up otherwise than by a high production of sugar beet.

Mr. Elliot: What the hon. Member has said, like "the flowers that bloom in the spring," has got "nothing to do with the case" at all. The hon. Member says that we do not get stock-feeding from sugar beet, but anyone who knows anything about the question knows that you take the top and bottom off the beet and feed it to stock and that it is one of the most valuable foods there is.

Mr. Holt: I am aware that that happens to sugar beet, but I am also aware that people want other kinds of feedingstuffs as well. We managed to feed our various animals and birds before we grew sugar beet, and we could do it again. About 12 months ago we had a Budget in which there was an increase in the duty on root chicory. The Economic Secretary to the Treasury, if I remember rightly, got it muddled up and suggested that it was a very good duty because he was growing the article at home. He had it wrong, because he was growing vegetable chicory and not root chicory. The argument for increasing the duty on root chicory at that time was to encourage its growth to deal with eel worm, which, apparently, comes as a result of growing too much sugar beet.

Major Legge-Bourke: Major Legge-Bourkeindicated assent.

Mr. Holt: I am glad that I am right in one agricultural matter.
When the Minister said that there is no controversy in this matter, I thought I should send him a copy of a very interesting document written by a number

of hon. Members called, "Change is our Ally," because it says:
One aspect of the existing pattern of farming subsidies which seems to us to merit review is the continuing impetus it gives to the growing of sugar-beet.
Apparently the party of the right hon. Gentleman is not united on this matter. I hope that later in the debate we may have some views from these people.

Mr. J. Griffiths: Who wrote the document?

Mr. Holt: Perhaps I might send a copy to the right hon. Member. It was edited by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) and the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr. Vaughan-Morgan), who was in the Chamber earlier. The group call themselves, the "One Nation" group.

Mr. S. N. Evans: Is it buckshee?

Mr. Griffiths: No, it is subsidised.

Mr. Holt: We do not need to go further into that aspect of the matter.
I feel that the Government are completely abdicating their responsibility if they really believe that Commonwealth agreements are a good thing for encouraging the growth of Commonwealth trade and helping to maintain or even to reach a rising standard of living for many people in the West Indies, as it seems completely anomalous that at the same time they should go on encouraging the growth of sugar beet in this country when it is both uneconomic and an expense to the taxpayer.

5.56 p.m.

Mr. Ronald Russell: The hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt) and the right hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Gordon Walker) both wondered why we on this side of the House could support a Bill which contains a large number of restrictions. I have a certain amount of sympathy with their querulousness on this point. I do not like those restrictions and I do not like Bills which can be called by anyone Socialist Bills. But there are times when we have to submit to restrictions of this kind rather than have complete chaos under full freedom. I prefer this method of dealing with the problem than that of State trading, which has been in existence for so long. This is a compromise and


shows that we on this side of the House are not a wholly dogmatic party, rigid in our outlook, like the party opposite. That is the difference between us.
However, it is from the Commonwealth point of view of this matter that I want to deal with the Bill. The hon. Member for Bolton, West, if I may say so with respect, ought to read the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement and the International Sugar Agreement because he would then find he need not be alarmed about production or the fact that there is any rigid quota of Commonwealth sugar. I think he will find that the total quota for the exporting countries of the Commonwealth for next year is to be 75,000 tons higher than in 1954 and 1955. That has been permitted by the International Sugar Agreement, which fixes the total quota for the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement.
If I thought that this Bill would in any way diminish the production of Commonwealth sugar, or be a discouragement to the production of Commonwealth sugar, I would not be in favour of supporting it, but I do not think it will have that effect at all. This change from State trading to another method more akin to private enterprise was foreshadowed when the Commonwealth Agreement was signed in 1951, and the machinery for doing so is contained in the Sugar Agreement. I think I am right in saying that it was done in agreement with the exporting countries of the Commonwealth at that time.
I was with the right hon. Member for Smethwick in the West Indies in July. I am very keenly conscious of the need for stimulating all possible production of sugar, particularly in that part of the world where at least one Colony, Barbados, depends entirely on the production of sugar, and in most of the other British territories it is the chief agricultural crop. When visiting one of the largest sugar estates in Jamaica I learned that it would have to cut back sugar production by 25 per cent. next year compared with this year because it had exceeded its quota.
I regret any such cutting down in Commonwealth sugar production. But it is needed because if we did not have the Commonwealth Agreement plus the International Agreement we would have chaos and the cost of Commonwealth

production would be undercut by Cuba, causing more distress and unemployment than there is there at the moment. I do not like this cutting down and realise that we have to do everything possible to increase production.

Mr. James Johnson: It might be better to buy less Cuban sugar for dollars and more Jamaica sugar inside the sterling bloc.

Mr. Russell: I should be glad if that could be done. I was sorry about one recommendation in the Bill, which my right hon. Friend touched on in his opening speech, namely, that the Board shall not buy Commonwealth sugar outside the Agreement unless directed by the Minister.
I am sorry to see that, because I do not see why the Board should not be allowed to buy Commonwealth sugar outside the Agreement if it thinks fit to do so. My right hon. Friend said that he would propose an Amendment during the Committee stage to restrict this direction to a separate recommendation for each cargo. I wonder why, because that would appear to make it all the more difficult for the Board to buy Commonwealth sugar outside the Agreement. I hope that this step is not being taken for any international reasons. I should like to see the Board free to do what it likes to help any part of the Commonwealth—especially the West Indies—to produce as much sugar as it possibly can.
I welcome the Bill, because it means that London will once again become the centre of international trade in sugar. I have no figures with me, but I am quite certain that before the war a very great deal of benefit in the way of foreign exchange was derived because the international market for sugar was in London. I am glad to see that this market will be restored, and that London will once again become the centre of the world's trade in sugar.

6.1 p.m.

Mr. Will Owen: I listened with interest to the Minister's explanation of the Bill, and especially to his comment that he regards the Bill, as at present drafted, as being complex, and anticipates that further elucidation will be forthcoming when it reaches the Committee stage. There are certain features of the


Bill which I regard as meriting the consideration of the House.
The endeavour by the Government to reconcile private trading with Socialist practice will not succeed. The Bill assures us that the general practice of the maintenance on the one hand of the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement and, on the other, of the agreement with the British beet sugar growers, will not be changed. If the basic features of past practice are to be accepted, what will this complex new sugar Bill achieve? It seems to me that its principal purpose is to ensure the fulfilment of a doctrinaire policy. The Government are bringing forward a complex Bill for no other purpose than to demonstrate their sheer prejudice against State trading.
The hon. Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell) thought that one effect of the Measure would be the reopening of the London futures sugar market, and the re-establishment of London in preference to New York as the centre of that field of international trade. The Bill reflects the Government's desire to promote private interests by legislation, and that probably serves some useful purpose in the commercial progress of Britain, but it seeks principally to curtail what has become an established practice at a time when I should have thought it desirable for the Government to review in its entirety the whole question of sugar production and distribution in the interests of the producer and the consumer.
The very nature of the proposal, as indicated by my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) is that the personnel who will benefit from the measure are the producers in the Commonwealth, the producer in Britain, and the British Sugar Corporation. The people who will not benefit are the consumers. For many months—ever since the Tory Party took office—the British housewife has been subject to constantly increasing burdens, and this new Measure is not likely to alleviate them. The Minister said that he wanted to assure the House that there would be no increase in the price of sugar to the consumer. Commenting upon the Bill, the Economist uttered the warning that there is no guarantee that the price of sugar to the consumer will not be increased. The Minister indicated that

the Bill allows the Minister to protect the consumer. I hope he will tell us just what machinery for consumer protection exists in the Bill, because such protection is essential if the British taxpayer is to continue to meet additional liabilities.
There is considerable substance in the observation of my right hon. Friend the Member for Smethwick (Mr. Gordon Walker) that the Commonwealth is disturbed at the tendencies inherent in this piece of legislation, and that it would necessarily be anxious to secure some assurance that the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, which has now been operating for some years, is a basic feature of Government policy in the interests of the Colonies concerned and the industry in which they are engaged.
I make a plea to the Minister to consider once again the proposal for the levy upon sugar being passed on to the consumer, as that, in itself, is increasing the consumer's liability.

Mr. Harmar Nicholls: It is rather important not to have a wrong impression upon this point. Nothing in the Bill or in the surcharge will increase the cost to the consumer, if there is any alteration in the price of sugar, it is an alteration which could take place whether
we had the Bill or not. We should not get the idea that this surcharge will increase the price of sugar to the consumer.

Mr. Owen: That may be the idea of the Government, but it is not explicitly embodied in the Bill. Those who are now commenting upon the implications of the Bill—both inside and outside the trade—are expressing considerable fears that this is what will happen.

Mr. Nicholls: At present, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food does the buying and arranges the averaging which settles the price in the shops. Under the Bill the same averaging will be done, but it will be done by the Board, under the surcharge, instead of by the Ministry, and the effect to the consumer will be the same.

Mr. Owen: That assurance will be vindicated only in practice and in the administration of the Measure. Our experience in other matters means that the organisations concerned would be justified if they did not accept it.
I wanted to press the point, and I hope the Minister will recognise it, that there is considerable concern throughout the country at the prospect that this scheme will put an additional burden on the domestic budget and another liability which will fall—not equitably—upon rich and poor. What the Bill means, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North said, is that the liability which will fall on the rich and poor is not equitable, is unjust, and is, therefore, a feature of the Measure that should have further consideration.

6.11 p.m.

Mr. Graham Page: I understand that the object of the Bill is to end the present system of State trading. It is not to end the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, as many hon. Members on the other side have endeavoured to imply. I think that the main trading results of the scheme proposed in the Bill will be a revival of the international sugar trade in London, with the great benefits which that will bring to this country. I do not think it will have any domestic results. From the assurances we have received from the Minister and the Joint Parliamentary Secretary about how the new scheme and the surcharge will work, understand that the Bill and the scheme in it will not have any effect on the price of sugar to the housewife.
The right hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Gordon Walker) made rather heavy weather about the proposed scheme as it is set out in Clause 1 (5). I think that that subsection is probably the root of the scheme. This country has its obligations under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement. The Government have to see, in bringing in this new scheme, that those obligations are observed. They are to be observed by the simple scheme of the Sugar Board's purchasing the 1,568,000 tons under the Agreement at the negotiated price and selling it in the country of origin at the commercial price. I cannot see in that any of the terrible complications which hon. Members opposite say they see. It seems to me a very simple, right and proper type of trading that the Sugar Board should purchase at the price at which the Government are under an obligation to purchase and then sell at the marketable or commercial price in the country of origin and that the refiners

should arrange for the sugar to be brought from the country of origin to this country.
I would, however, agree with the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt) to a certain extent when he describes this as a Socialist Bill. I would not say that this is a Socialist Bill, but I would say that it has Socialist trimmings about which some of us on this side of the House are not too happy. One of those trimmings occurs in that subsection (5) to which I have referred, in the proviso by which the Minister retains to himself the right to swing from this scheme, which is being introduced by the Bill, right back to the present scheme.
I was glad to hear my right hon. Friend, in his speech, say that he would move some Amendments later, as I understood, to the Clauses by which the Minister retains the power to restore the old scheme. I thought that the Minister had some difficulty to justify these restrictions to the scheme, particularly the directions he is retaining by Clause 1. If we are satisfied that the scheme in the Bill is operative, that it can operate efficiently—and I understand the trade is quite satisfied that it can operate it and keep the obligations under the Commonwealth Agreement—we ought not to hold a sword of Damocles over the head of the industry, the threat that we may at any time return to the old scheme. I hope that the Joint Parliamentary Secretary, in replying to the debate, may give us a little more information about the Amendments which the Minister has in mind to Clause 1.
In my view, all that is necessary in this scheme is that the Sugar Board's purchasing power should be restricted to buying the Commonwealth sugar which we are obliged to buy under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, 1,568,000 tons, and that the Sugar Board's selling power should be restricted to selling that sugar at a commercial price in the country of origin. With these two powers the scheme is easy to operate—with the purchasing restricted to the Commonwealth sugar which this country is obliged to purchase under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, the selling by the Board restricted to selling that sugar at a commercial price in the country of origin. If private enterprise, buying the sugar from the Sugar Board, is incapable of enabling the Government to carry out


the obligations of the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, let the Minister come back to the House and say so.
I ask my right hon. Friend, when launching the scheme as set out in the Bill, not to look at it as a sort of toy boat on a pond, and not to hang on to the string. Let the industry operate the scheme. There are plenty of safeguards in the Bill for the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement and for the obligations under it, and for the obligations to the home growers of sugar beet. If we can dispose of what I would call the Socialist trimmings, particularly in Clause 1, I shall welcome the Bill.

6.20 p.m.

Mr. James Johnson: I thought that my right hon. Friend the Member for Smethwick (Mr. Gordon Walker) absolutely massacred the Minister and the Bill earlier in the debate and, therefore, not being a sugar beet farmer, I do not intend to embark upon the subject of the British Sugar Corporation. The Minister has since said, following an exchange with my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey), that the colonial producers are quite satisfied. I want, as it were, to try to forget myself and where I belong
and try to speak as if I were a Member for Mauritius or Barbados and to consider what they would see in the Bill. I have, therefore, torn up my notes for the speech which I intended to deliver and will try to express myself on the Bill from the point of view of producers in the Colonies.
If I were a colonial entering the United Kingdom, I should be driven to the conclusion that it was one of the ancient myths of these islands that the Tory Party is the party of Empire. When I look at their performance since 1951, I believe they are the party of anti-Empire. It will be recalled that on Wednesday of last week my hon. Friend the Member for Wednesbury (Mr. S. N. Evans) gave capital investment figures to show what the Tory Government are doing or, rather, not doing for the Colonies, compared with what the Labour Party did when it was in office. If anyone who has read that speech and has seen the Bill is yet not disillusioned, he can consult Lord Beaverbrook and the Daily Express, because the noble Lord has been disillusioned for many years with the party opposite in the matter of colonial affairs.
I think that we are all agreed tonight that no longer can we obtain cheap food out of the Colonies. Those days are gone. Not only shall we have dearer food in the West End hotels, but we have seen the end of cheap food in the poorer, working class homes of the East End. There-fore, whatever assurance the Minister gives about the future price of sugar not being dearer as a result of the wonderfully intricate system which he has devised and embodied in the Bill, I am prepared at least to see dearer sugar if it means better working conditions in Mauritius, Jamaica, and other parts of the Empire.
When one talks to delegations who come to this country from the West Indies and elsewhere to meet the Government and Ministers, one finds that the Government have shown less sympathy with their hopes and aspirations than did the Labour Government, and I believe that in the Bill the Colonies get less change from the Government than they did when the Labour Party was in office. Why is there any need at all for the Bill? The old system was working quite well and these provisions will make no difference to the output of the sugar plantations overseas. I share the desire of the hon. Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell) to see larger output and more expansion in this industry. Islands like Mauritius, Jamaica and Barbados are islands of mono-culture, and sugar is the best example of mono-culture.
It can be said of Mauritius that the population keeps pace with the output of sugar. It is said there that if 500,000 tons of sugar is produced annually, the population is 500,000. It is said that production of sugar in the island can be increased to 750,000 tons annually, which means that the population can increase too, though not very much further. Whatever the Bill does or does not do, the Minister, in winding up the debate, must give the House and the Colonies a solemn assurance that it will in no way attack present agreements and in no way vitiate or debilitate any future agreements with the Colonies to take their sugar. The party opposite has consistently attacked the Labour Party as the party of bulk purchase and guaranteed markets in the Colonies.

Mr. Harmar Nicholls: My right hon. Friend has given that assurance in the


clearest possible terms and it should have been recognised by the hon. Member as having been given.

Mr. Johnson: I thank the hon. Gentleman. Sugar has ever been a shuttlecock of politics and it is good that we should have guarantees for years ahead. The Government must live up to their Agreement, but I see no need for this helter-skelter of mechanism in the Bill if our object is to guarantee the Colonies their future and to take the sugar that they produce.

Mr. Russell: Is not the hon. Member confusing two issues? The things that Colonies are so keen to have are long-term contracts, which are not quite the same as bulk purchase. In this case, we on this side of the House are as much in favour of long-term contracts as is the hon. Member.

Mr. Johnson: That may be so, but the Bill is twenty years late in implementing what Lord Olivier said in 1930, when he was pleading for a genuine marketing board to implement a genuine bulk purchase system which would give the Colonies a guaranteed future. What he had in mind is not the kind of thing which this Bill provides.
If I were a colonial producer, and I saw from the Bill that the Sugar Board was to consist of a chairman and not more than four other members, I would ask, "Why cannot we have written into the appropriate Clause in the Bill that of the four members two shall be Commonwealth or colonial producers?" I should like the Minister to answer the question, or in some way endeavour to meet a perfectly legitimate claim on the part of the overseas producers to have their interests safeguarded in that way and to have on the board perhaps one member to represent the Queensland plantations and those of South Africa, and another who would be the watch-dog for producers in Mauritius, Barbados, Jamaica and other islands.
I hope that the Minister will consider that point. In that way we should help to reassure people in the Colonies and to dissipate some of the suspicions in the minds of some of the overseas producers that the Bill is not necessary and in no way helps them in their task. The Government will find it difficult to lull those

suspicions, but a provision of this kind might help to ensure that producers overseas did not feel that they were being thrown to the wolves. We have had an assurance that the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement will be maintained. Let us also say to the overseas producers that they can have representatives on the Board who will stand up for them, safeguard their interests, and speak on their behalf when there is need to do so.

6.29 p.m.

Mr. J. E. B. Hill: It might be thought from some of the remarks made in the debate that the price of sugar to the housewife was unduly high as a result of our arrangements with the home industry and the Commonwealth, but it is worth remembering that the price of sugar in the shops in this country is rather lower than it is in many other countries, including the United States, France and Switzerland. We are, of course, the biggest sweet-eating nation in the world. These facts rather belie the impression that has been given that sugar is unnecessarily expensive.
I welcome the Bill because it seems to me to hold the balance that has been more or less agreed and has been working between the Commonwealth producer and the home industry, in the ratio roughly of two to the Commonwealth and one to the home industry.
I am speaking for the home industry because much sugar beet is grown in my constituency. I have to declare my interest in this subject because I grow sugar beet, though not wittingly any chicory. The production of sugar beet rescued arable farming, particularly in East Anglia, from a serious depression. It did not come in as a freak crop which, perhaps, should have been grown in the tropics, but as a necessary cash root crop.
I do not want to get involved in technicalities, especially as the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt) has left the Chamber, but I must point out that in addition to the sugar we not only get tops for the feeding of livestock, but the pulp in both dry and wet forms is a further source of food. Finally, even the factory residue is carted out and spread on the land as a valuable fertiliser.

Mr. Cyril Bence: Some of it.

Mr. Hill: Yes, it depends on transport, but for those who are lucky enough to be near a factory, it is extremely valuable.

Mr. Bence: I wish that the factories near the rivers would not push the residue into them and spoil some of our best trout or salmon fishing.

Mr. Hill: We can await with pleasure a later debate on river pollution.
The development of the sugar beet industry has been one of the success stories of agricultural scientific invention and research, both as regards machinery and plant breeding. I think the hon. Member for Bolton, West somewhat unwillingly paid tribute to the advance made, which can be summarised as an overall increase in yield of some 50 per cent. over the 1939 yield per acre. Indeed, what was a spectacular yield pre-war is now only respectable, and unless we grow a good crop sugar beet is not worth growing, because it is troublesome to grow.
Now a word on costs. The cost of British sugar beet per ton last year was slightly less than the agreed price under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement. This year, instead of the estimates providing for a large subsidy, they record an expected credit moving from the Corporation to the Government of about £2 million. This shows that our sugar beet industry has progressed steadily to a stage when it is largely economic, thanks to subsidies given in the past.
Our expansion has come mainly from a limited acreage and I am a litle anxious, as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) pointed out, that Clause 17 rather suggests that any limitations the Minister may make in future will be on quantity, which I take it refers to tonnage rather than to acreage. It will be appreciated that in growing a root crop which varies in yield so much from year to year, the only feasible unit of production to take is acreage, especially when the acreage has to be fitted into the general rotational policy of the farm. It may be that a tonnage limitation of quantity might in future become more satisfactory when dealing with the total funds available for a guarantee, but I

hope that any modifications in production will be expressed in acreage.
I doubt whether the home industry is likely to expand a great deal further. In some parts of the South, farmers wanting to have a factory in their own area have been refused by the Minister, in my judgment rightly from the national point of view, but perhaps unluckily from the point of view of Southern farmers. The big drawback, however, about the sugar beet crop is that it is greedy in labour and is an arduous and exacting task. It is cheerfully carried out, but the fact remains that the labour costs make it expensive. The cost of homegrown sugar beet, therefore, will depend in future very much on the advances made in labour-saving devices, and it may well be that some striking changes towards cheapness may be made, particularly in devising a method of singling the plants in spring by something other than the human eye and hand.
The right way to judge the future course of the balance between the home industry and the Commonwealth producer is to watch it over the years, because if the costs of growing sugar beet in this country in relation to those of the Commonwealth show a steady upward trend, farmers should be induced to turn slowly to more remunerative crops. On the other hand, if costs come down and we can produce sugar beet here inside the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement price, as we have done in this last year, the home grower, having accepted a limitation in his acreage, should in equity have the right to maintain his authorised acreage as a sound, and, indeed, a proved economic proposition.

6.38 p.m.

Mr. Jack Jones: The House may well ask what a steel worker knows about sugar. I know this, that the Government have accepted a pill, not a Bill, which has been well and truly coated with sugar. Its net effect will put State trading under a different name, but instead of the State benefiting from the trading the resulting benefit, once again, will go to the private enterprise merchants.
The first thing I ask the Minister to be certain about is that the people concerned with the trading will insert into their contracts in the future, if it is not there at the moment, the fair wages clause


for the people who work where the sugar is grown. British trade unionists do not mind paying a fair price for an article provided they know that the price is based upon fair conditions and upon fair wages being paid to our coloured brothers in other parts of the world and to our white brothers in other parts of the Empire. We want to be sure that the people who are creating what we cannot do without shall have the benefit of a fair wages clause just as they do in engineering and other industrial contracts in our country.
My second point concerns the distribution of sugar in time of shortage. My constituency has a big interest in sugar because it contains one or two confectionery factories, including one large one, at which some of my constituents—good-looking lassies—work, and, judging by General Election results, most of whom support their present Member of Parliament. They and the proprietors are concerned about who will get sugar in time of shortage, strikes and shipping difficulties, or when supplies become contaminated and even destroyed because of bad storage.
The little men are wondering what their position will be under the Bill. They want to be absolutely certain that the big boys, such as Cadburys and others who buy sugar in colossal amounts, will not get preferential treatment compared with them. This is a very important point. It may be covered in the Bill, but I can find no provision relating to consumer interests. We have had other Bills, such as the Measure relating to steel, in which there has been so much legal jargon that it has been difficult to find what we have been after, and it is the same with this Bill. Consumers are gravely concerned, and I hope the Minister will give us an assurance about the position.
On the question of home production, I know a little bit about singling. Why farmers sow 1,000 seeds and then take 992 of them out I have never been able to discover. Is it beyond the wit of British engineers to find a means of sowing seeds more thinly so that farmers can do what I do with my prize carrots and onions—sow them thinly and do less singling? I know that singling is a difficult task. Sugar beet takes a lot of forking, slicing, heading and tailing and putting into carts for the purpose of taking it to the station or the factory.
However, that is not the point about which I am concerned. The important point is what is done with the stuff which is not wanted. The beetroot goes to the factory, and the pulp is dried and stored and used for feeding cattle, and so on. The Board must take great care about what is done with the unwanted residue by the persons who are running the sugar beet industry. In and around Wisbech they have ruined some of the finest fishing in the country with the residue. When one ruins fishing, one ruins the minds of men. When the minds of men are ruined, those men do not go to work on Monday as happily as they ought to. If the men do not work as happily as they ought to, they cannot earn the wages that they might. If they do not earn the wages that they might, they cannot buy the produce of the farmers. Let the farmers get it into their heads that we take serious objection to their spoiling fishing by tipping effluent into the rivers during the hours of darkness. I would say to them, "Stop it! It is bad practice. We have had too much of it."
That is all I want to say about the Bill. It is the same as good Socialism with a lot of sugar round it. Hon. Gentlemen opposite must swallow it just as they will have to swallow a lot more Socialism in like manner in due course.

6.42 p.m.

Lady Tweedsmuir: I should like to follow the hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. Jack Jones) on the subject of the pollution of rivers and have a long discourse with him on the subject of salmon and trout fishing, for I hear a great deal about it at home, but I fear that Mr. Speaker might call me to order. Consequently, I shall return to the subject of the Bill.
The House will be grateful for the fact that we have had an absolutely clear indication of policy from the Opposition benches. We know what the Labour Party would like to do with the sugar refining industry. The hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey), stating Opposition policy, said that the Labour Party would still like to nationalise the sugar refining industry. Now we know where we are.

Mr. Wiley: I apologise for interrupting the hon. Lady, but I did not mention the nationalisation of the sugar refining


industry. I regarded that as a matter outside the subject that we are discussing today.

Lady Tweedsmuir: So did I. That is why I was rather surprised when the hon. Gentleman said that he based his argument on the fact that, to a large extent, part of the sugar interests in the country constituted a monopoly. He clearly said, "We should like to complete the job." It seems to me that that indicates that the Labour Party would like to complete the job by bringing the sugar refining industry under State control.
I have the impression that one of the main reasons behind all the criticism of the Bill from the Opposition is that hon. Members opposite realise that, because of the way the Bill is framed, it would be impossible for a future Government to nationalise the sugar refining industry. It is very important that the country should know that. Nor is it possible under the Bill, as it stands, for any future Government to stop or govern the importation of sugar.

Mr. Jack Jones: Is the hon. Lady suggesting that a future Government could not repeal this Measure?

Lady Tweedsmuir: Any Government could, of course, repeal any Measure, but under the Bill the Minister, despite all the criticisms of his powers, could not bring about State control of the sugar industry as a whole.
I felt that it was very mischievous of several right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite, including the right hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Gordon Walker), who has had the honour of being Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, to suggest that there is anything in the Bill which could in any way alter the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, or weaken confidence overseas, particularly as the Minister rose at least four times during the speech of the hon. Member for Sunderland, North to say categorically that that was not so.
One of the main reasons why I support the Bill is that it makes provision for Britain to continue to buy up to 1½ million tons of sugar under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement. I should like to put one fact before the House. The total sugar consumption in the United Kingdom at present is about 2½ million

tons annually. The home sugar beet industry contributes about I million tons. Therefore, surely the House must be driven to the conclusion that there is very little margin in the British consuming market for more home-grown sugar beet.
We have heard the plea of my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. J. E. B. Hill). I sit for a constituency which is half a Scottish city; we do not grow sugar beet there and so I am in a very different position from that of my hon. Friend. On the other hand, if we face the situation realistically, I do not see how we can go on encouraging, or making possible, a larger acreage or tonnage of sugar beet to be grown at home. Just as we say to the Commonwealth that it is very important that certain areas should not be entirely dependent on one commodity crop, so should we say that to our farmers.
Like the right hon. Member for Smethwick, I was a member of the delegation to the West Indies. I took a particular interest in Jamaica because the biggest sugar estate there, Monymusk, was founded many years ago by one of my forebears, one of the Grants of Monymusk, in Scotland, the estate in Jamaica being named after the Scottish estate, although I regret to say that it is now the property of Tate and Lyle. I was extraordinarily interested to discover that, despite the fact that a new refinery has been built on the Monymusk sugar estate and that production is very efficient, those concerned realise that they cannot continue indefinitely increasing the total acreage of sugar in the island.
Jamaica is trying to diversify its crops. More bananas are being grown. Experiments in rearing cattle are being undertaken, and there are also experiments aimed at improving grassland. A great many more secondary industries have been established in Jamaica since I was last there five years ago. Throughout the British Caribbean there is every realisation that it is dangerous to be dependent upon one commodity crop. Trinidad is fortunate enough to have oil and other crops. British Guiana has tried rice and is increasing its experiments with jute. I hope that they will develop their minerals in the interior, although it is very difficult.
When we discuss what we want to do in supporting Commonwealth sugar and


our home industry, we should realise that sugar is a peculiarly suitable crop for the West Indies. I speak particularly of the West Indies because they are the largest contributors to the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement. We may have noticed that in the devastating hurricanes that recently hit the West Indies the crop which stood up
best in Granada and Barbados was the sugar crop. It is, therefore, not only because of geographical considerations but also from other points of view, a peculiarly suitable crop for that part of the Commonwealth.
A point which I wish to bring before the House will, I trust, be replied to by the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, because it is particularly related to the distribution of sugar in Scotland. I very much welcome the fact, which should be widely known, that there will be no change in the price of sugar to the consumer in the United Kingdom under this Bill, but there will be, as I read the Bill, an effect on distribution. It will limit the housewives' choice in Scotland. I therefore particularly welcomed the statement the Minister's opening speech that he would like to hear representations from consumers.
Clause 25 imposes a restraint of trade between refiners. This very important point was put to me by the Wholesale Grocers' Association of Scotland, which covers the whole of Scotland. That country is zoned or divided into areas for distribution. After derationing, traders on the west coast could draw their supplies from Greenock, and on the east coast from the British Sugar Corporation in Cupar. Sugar could be drawn from either area by wholesalers outside that area.
In practice, the Greenock sugar is, on the whole, rather more popular than the east coast sugar. The reason is that the general public seems to know that at certain times of the year the sugar of the British Sugar Corporation is made from home beet. The hon. Member for Norfolk, South may say that sugar made from beet is better than other sugar, but it is not the housewife's choice. The British public likes to buy sugar of its own choice, whether we think that is reasonable or not.
Under Clause 25 of the Bill, sugar refiners will be liable to the heavy fines laid out in Clause 28 if they are found

supplying sugar outwith their own areas. That also applies to beet sugar, because there may be consumers who prefer beet sugar and want to be able to get it. That fact is deeply resented, so far as I can ascertain, by all the members of the Wholesale Grocers' Association of Scotland. In the Aberdeen area, in which I represent part of the city of Aberdeen, we are in a fortunate position because we are part of the area which can draw sugar from Greenock, although we are on the east coast.
Therefore, the Clause does not apply to our traders, except that it is a restraint of trade between the two areas. For example, Aberdeen and eighteen other counties can draw their sugar from the Greenock sugar refineries. Those counties confined to Cupar sugar are: Fife, Angus, Clackmannan, Orkney and Shetlands, Ross and Cromarty, Sutherland, Caithness, Inverness, Nairn, Moray, Banff and Kincardine.
The result is that some retailers will lose severely on their business, while others stand to gain a great deal. The fact that Aberdeen wholesalers are in a favourable position but are utterly opposed to the principle of the Bill, which is that of denial of choice under the present arrangement, is real proof of the anxiety that exists throughout the wholesale grocers in Scotland. I trust that the Joint Under-Secretary will be able to give us an assurance that an Amendment will be prepared, between the Second Reading and the Committee stage, to make this useful Bill even better.

6.56 p.m.

Mr. Sidney Dye: The hon. Lady the Member for Aberdeen, South (Lady Tweedsmuir) made it quite clear that she was not in favour of the extension of the growing of sugar beet in this country.

Lady Tweedsmuir: Lady Tweedsmuirindicated assent.

Mr. Dye: I am not sure that anybody was advocating it. The hon. Lady was not clear whether she intended to reduce the amount of sugar beet. It was clear that the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt) attacked the growing of sugar beet, and he called in his support hon. Members who support the Government. That indicates that there is a live force in the Conservative Party against the growing of sugar beet in this country.


That was the whole purpose of the hon. Member's speech. He nods, and so indicates that that is so.
This is a matter for Government policy. If we want a certain proportion of sugar to be grown in this country, we must ask the farmers to do it. They produced sufficient beet sugar throughout the four years of war to equal the domestic ration and, while there is still the threat of world war, we only undermine the farming industry if we indicate that we want to replace home-produced sugar with imported sugar; we also undermine one of the war defences of the country.
There is something to be said for beet sugar. Our production of sugar is small compared with that of other countries, yet the fact that we have produced it here has influenced the world price to remain at a lower level than would otherwise have been the case. The country gets some advantage from the world price of sugar by growing a proportion of its crop.
I do not think that the hon. Member for Bolton has the slightest idea of the value of the sugar crop to our home agriculture. This is not just one crop; the value is in the rotation. Since the sugar beet crop has been grown in this country, and since the later improvements in cultivation, manuring and the rest, the standard of the crop has improved and so has the standard of all the crops which follow it. We are not growing less corn and other foodstuffs than we were when the sugar beet crop was introduced, but actually growing more and better crops both of corn and of roots.
The hon. Gentleman completely fails to realise that a good crop of sugar beet produces two tons of refined sugar to the acre. On top of that there will be three quarters of a ton of beet pulp, which is good food, equivalent in feeding value, weight for weight, to a crop of oats. In addition to that, the crowns of the beet are equivalent to a crop of turnips. We therefore get three crops in one. During the war, that was food production far in excess of the production of the years before the war.

Mr. Holt: What my hon. Friend says confirms me in my view that the support price of this sugar beet is a lot too high. Would he address himself to the argument which I was trying to put to the House, and which was not an agricultural one,

with regard to the West Indians coming to this country? If we bought more sugar from the West Indies and did not buy our own beet sugar, because we did not produce it, would not that stop the West Indians from coming here?

Mr. Dye: I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman would have turned his attention elsewhere and asked Her Majesty's Government why, instead of buying less sugar from the West Indies, they bought such a lot from Cuba, some of which is still stored on airfields in my constituency. If within this country and the Commonwealth we can produce all the sugar that we need, there is no need to go beyond. I should have thought that would have been apparent to anyone.
Here we have an essential food and I should have thought that if men, with all their ingenuity and energy, can make the best use of the earth, they can produce more than can be consumed by the purchasing power in the hands of the people. Because of that, a surplus can arise and can undermine the price that covers the cost of production. Hence there is need for sonic kind of organisation both within this country and within the Commonwealth, and, I should have thought, internationally as well.
If we want to assure the people of the West Indies a decent standard of life, far better than they have enjoyed before, we ought to encourage the growth of sugar cane and of other crops. That is what we should give our attention to. I have read with horror of the very low standard of living of the people who are producing sugar in the West Indies. I should have thought that long ago we ought to have been in favour of a price for sugar which would have ensured to those people a decent standard of living for the work they do. Why go on year after year exploiting them on the basis of a so-called world market for sugar, which covers only one-tenth of the total production? Apart from the West Indies, all the other countries have a higher price for their sugar than the world price for sugar. That, of course, is a ridiculous situation which we ought to guard against. It seems to me that there is need for some form of control, such as is indicated in the Bill, but whether this is the best form is another matter.
The hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) seemed to be in a somewhat confused state of mind when starting his speech. He referred to the price of coal as if that had something to do with this Bill. Indeed, it has, if we compare the increased price of coal with the increased price of sugar, or, for that matter, with the pulp that conies from the factories. The point which the hon. and gallant Gentleman was making was that since coal has been nationalised its price has gone up, but the price of sugar beet pulp has gone up far exceeding any increase in the price of sugar.
The price that the grower of sugar beet is now charged for his pulp is £20 5s. a ton. That is the lowest price at which he can get it. A few years ago he could get it for £3 a ton. If we take the price of sugar, it is not so many years ago that it was 2d. per lb. Now packed sugar is 8½ per lb. That represents a percentage increase far exceeding the increase in the price of coal, so if we are to compare a nationalised industry with one that is not nationalised and the price of its products, then coal seems to be far better off than beet pulp or sugar.

Major Legge-Bourke: I think that the hon. Gentleman has forgotten the context in which I was referring to this matter. In 1945, nationalisation, particularly of coal, was solely on the argument that it would result in cheaper prices.

Mr. Dye: Whatever may have been the context of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman's argument, the figures are heavily against him. If we are going to say that the argument against the nationalisation of sugar is that the price has been kept down better than the price of coal, then the hon. and gallant Gentleman has solved his argument altogether, because he has nothing to base it upon.
There is, however, this question exercising the minds of the farming community that, although they grow the sugar beet and send it to the factories, they pay for it going to the factories and then they have to fetch the pulp from the factories. As the hon. and gallant Gentleman knows, all the farmers are greatly concerned at the power the British Sugar Corporation has of charging a higher price for pulp which goes back to the people who have

produced it, a price which is not written into the contract at all.
Let us take the position with regard to the grower of sugar today. He makes a contract. On the basis of that contract he is paid. If, as occurred this year, the price of labour goes up and other things as well, then there has been, for this year, an increase of 2s. a ton in the beet delivered to the factories; but, as I have pointed out, when the pulp is brought hack, the increase is £3 a ton—a very big increase indeed.
What happens with regard to the price of sugar? The price of sugar since September, 1954, to the present time has gone up. It has gone up by.½d. per lb. We cannot say whether this Bill will put it up higher or bring it down, but as things are working at present there is a steady rise in the price of sugar. The wholesale price of sugar has gone up by about £6 a ton over the past 12 or 14 months, and it has continued to rise. So with the increased price of sugar and the increased price of pulp, the British Sugar Corporation will have a far greater income this year than it had last year, although the cost of beet delivered to the factory represents only 2s. a ton and on the tonnage of sugar which is produced represents only about 15s. or 16s. a ton. The raw material as delivered to the factory goes up by 15s. or 16s. a ton, yet the sales price has gone up by over £6 a ton inside 12 months.
If that can happen under the present situation, what can happen under this Bill, whereby the Board will be there to manipulate prices? It does not seem as if they will manipulate them in a downward trend. I think that this question of the price of sugar, whether under this Bill or in the present circumstances, is one in which the general public should be interested. On those prices it is possible that the total income of the Corporation for the current year will be £47 million, but it will pay to the beet growers not more, and probably less, than £30 million for all the beet delivered.

Major Legge-Bourke: What will it pay in Excise Duty?

Mr. Dye: I do not know anything about that. It seems to me to be a completely crazy system whereby we have an industry which is subsidised and which at the same time has to pay Excise Duty.


That is beyond my comprehension, and therefore I cannot answer the hon. and gallant Gentleman's question.

Major Legge-Bourke: Nevertheless it is an important factor. It is one of the biggest expenses which the Corporation has to face each year.

Mr. Dye: That may well be so. I am merely pointing out that the difference between what the Corporation pays for its raw material, delivered to its factory, and the wholesale price is about £17 million. If it works as a highly mechanised industry, it seems to me that there is sufficient room for manipulation. It is for the Treasury to deal with the question of Excise Duty and subsidies.
It was said by the Minister that there would be a formula on which prices would be based and that that had been agreed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I am concerned to know whether not merely the formula but how it works out year by year will equally be made known to the public. The question whether in future the subsidies should be related to acreage or to tonnage is one in which the producers must be vitally interested. If it is to work as a former system worked—namely, that when a certain tonnage had been reached then the price paid beyond that would go down very considerably—there may be something to be said for that on the basis of forcing efficiency; but I think that the growers who play a vital part in this production should know what is the intention in changing to the tonnage system, and how it will work.
If the growing of sugar beet is done on the basis of national policy from a strategic point of view, then we naturally expect that those who carry out that work will have security in doing it and will improve their efficiency. Here we are discussing a branch of agriculture which in recent years has improved to a very great extent. I should not like to see anything done that would harm the keenness of those who are growing the sugar beet and delivering it to the factory, or anything that would harm the men who work at the factory.
I would ask that there might be some changes. Instead of our refining taking place mainly in four large ports, the factories, which are well scattered over the

country, should be used not only for refining home-produced raw sugar but, more economically throughout the year, for refining Commonwealth sugar. I should have thought that that would be a great advantage strategically and economically.

7.15 p.m.

Mr. A. G. Bottomley: We have had an interesting debate on what the Minister himself has said is a complicated Bill. Indeed, before we really had a chance to consider it he indicated that there have been second thoughts and that he will submit Amendments in Committee. The right hon. Gentleman said that the sugar policy followed by the Government had been the continuous policy for the past thirty years. He also appeared to indicate that those concerned in the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement and the sugar beet industry had the same guarantees and had no fear for the future.
We on this side of the House have some doubts about that and I hope to show in my speech that those doubts are fully justified. We are not very confident about the appointments which, in due course, will have to be made to the Sugar Board. I make this comment, because we are not inspired by past action. We know the Government have appointed either people who deliberately are not in sympathy with the object or people who can be moulded into a given way, so that we do not always get the best result from a public board. I make no reflection on the Minister himself. I would be guided by his judgment, but he would agree that it is not left to him alone to make the final decision.
What the Government really intend to do is to end State trading in sugar. That is quite deliberate. This is the last State trading, bulk-purchase arrangement, if we exclude the Danish Bacon Board contract, and the Government have shown clearly from the beginning that they intend to end it as soon as possible. It has not been done before because the Government have had contractual obligations under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement and statutory obligations under the Agriculture Act, 1947, to the home producers.
The House is aware that both those provisions were introduced by the
Labour Government, and we firmly believe in


them. We can claim a good deal of credit for the extent to which they have been successful. We think both should remain and that, whatever the intention of the Minister, he is on the slippery slope and we shall find that we are moving away completely from this kind of trading as time goes on. The Sugar Board may be an ingenious solution to meet the Government's obligations under these provisions—the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement and the Agriculture Act—but I repeat that, in my judgment and that of my hon. Friends, the Government are on the road to so-called complete free competition.
Let us examine the Government's commitments in respect of the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement. We all acknowledge that for a long time we were buying sugar at well below the world price. I was most disappointed to hear the representative of the Liberal Party, the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt), say that we want sugar for home consumption at the cheapest possible price.
I went to the West Indies in 1951, and the people I met there said, "We provide sugar now below the world price. We are doing it because we know that Britain is an honourable country, and when the world price rises she will not try to cut down, but will bring it up." What was even more revealing was when they said, "The wealth of your country, the Welfare State and the provision which your people enjoy, to some extent have been the result of the development of our own country. Do not you think it is time that you considered us?" At least, we can say that the majority of us accept it. I was intensely disappointed to hear the representative of the Liberal Party express his adverse view upon that subject.
My visit to the West Indies was for the purpose of convincing the West Indian sugar producers that the sugar we were buying from Cuba would in no way harm their interests. We bought sugar from Cuba for two reasons: first, because Cuba had an economic stranglehold upon us, and if we had not bought sugar we should have found conditions economically difficult. Secondly, we bought sugar to enable us to deration that commodity in this country. The succeeding Government got the credit for that Agreement which I helped to initial and to conclude, and I was heavily

criticised by the then Opposition and by the Daily Express, which referred to the "Black Pact"; but it was by that means that we were able to end the rationing of sugar.
When I was in the West Indies I gave this assurance to the members of the British West Indies Sugar Association:
The Government's undertaking to review the operation of the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement in 1953 in consultation with the producers stands. This undertaking provides that if sugar is unrationed in the United Kingdom in 1953 and if consumption proves higher than has been estimated at least a proportionate increase will be made in the quantities to be purchased at a guaranteed price.
I went on, finally, to say that this arrangement
would do nothing whatever to vitiate its effectiveness or to prejudice the interest of the Commonwealth producer.
I assume that the Government of the day still stand by that obligation given by the previous Government. If that be so, let us have a look at the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement and see what it says. It states:
Agreement is formalised from a general understanding that has been reached between the parties; that it is desirable in the terms and conditions arrived at to have a long-term agreement for supplying sugar to the United Kingdom and for developing the orderly marketing of that sugar.
I imagine that the Minister means what he said earlier, that the Government respect that. But we have recollections of past assurances from the Government—perhaps I should say from the party opposite before it was the Government. We remember the food subsidies. I do not wish to quote the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or the Prime Minister, but perhaps I may quote a leading spokesman for the party opposite—Lord Woolton—who said:
There is a story that the Conservatives would cut the food subsidies. That is not true.
Well, the public knows differently today, so when the Government give an assurance of this kind, if we are a little sceptical it is readily understandable.
The Government, however, could not be so blatant in the case of the Commonwealth. They have to deal with that somewhat differently. Article 7 of the Sugar Agreement says:
This Agreement shall remain in force from 1st January, 1950, until 31st December, 1959,


but may in the year 1952 or any subsequent years be successively extended by agreement for a further year.
So there was an obligation to look at it in 1952. What happened then? The then Minister of Food made this statement in the House:
The agreement is designed to provide within the next few years"—
and I underline "the next few years"—
sufficient sugar from Commonwealth sources to meet the greater part of the requirements of the Commonwealth."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th March, 1952; Vol. 497, c. 1904.]
I think that the use of the words, "the next few years" was quite deliberate. We were prepared to say five years. Are the Government prepared to say the same? That is the sort of assurance to satisfy the Commonwealth producers and to let them know that we mean what we say.
It has been said that the Commonwealth sugar producers will be able to play a full part in the London Sugar Market. I am a bit sceptical about that. I think that it is merely to get them used to a free market so that when the Agreement does end they will have some idea of how to play their part in the market. We have a right to be suspicious, because the Government have shown by their actions and behaviour that we are justified in being worried about these things.
Let me give some idea of how the Government are thinking these days. I recently questioned the President of the Board of Trade because we found that steel imports from dollar areas which were 14·2 million dollars in 1954 had risen to 49·4 million dollars in the first nine months of this year. That is one of the reasons why we have an adverse balance of trade and a drain upon our gold and dollar reserves. I asked the President whether we could get steel from elsewhere. He replied that it was obtained in the market where it could be most economically obtained.
That would happen in the case of sugar, too. That is the basis of the Government's policy—never mind about the well-being of the country or the Commonwealth; get it where it can be obtained most cheaply so long as there is a profit. That seems to be Government policy on these matters of economy. It appears to me that the saving of dollars will have no consideration, and that we shall buy sugar in the cheapest market.
The Government may say, "Yes, but even sugar cannot fall to a low price because of the International Sugar Agreement." But that is cold comfort for the Commonwealth or colonial sugar producers. So far as the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement is concerned, we can understand why we have not much hope for the future.
Let us consider the sugar beet industry. In 1935, the Greene Committee reported that it was unable to find positive justification for the expenditure of several millions a year on an industry which had no reasonable prospect of ever becoming self-supporting. The Government of the day, represented by the party opposite, quite rightly said they would not accept that report. Remembering that war clouds were looming up, there is no doubt that questions of strategy influenced their considerations. But let us recall that it was a Labour Government who, in 1924, introduced the sugar beet industry subsidy for the purposes of strategy and also as a means of helping the agricultural industry. It was a twofold purpose, to help the industry and to provide for the strategic requirements necessary in time of war to avoid having to ship from overseas many of the things which could be grown in this country.
At present all seems to be well, but will it continue? The British Sugar Corporation, it is said, is to continue to contract for home-produced sugar beet and the prices to be paid are to be fixed by the Government as a result of the Annual Review, or Special Review, of agricultural prices. The Board itself is to meet the deficiency which is lower than it might be because the Government now give subsidies to agriculture. Are those subsidies to continue? We heard the kind of economies that were to be made at the time of the Budget. Some were petty, but there were some savage economies affecting housing subsidies. What about agriculture? The Chancellor said:
This same criterion of economy and efficiency will have to be applied at the right time to the range of subsidies which fall within the field of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 26th October, 1955; Vol. 545, c. 212.].
When we recall that in the case of agriculture food subsidies in 1953 were running at the rate of £262 million a year, and in 1954 had risen to £312 million a year, I


think it is clear that the Minister himself has to do some adjustment.
I would remind the House that the British Sugar Association, to which everyone has given a blessing this afternoon, and with justification, was brought into being by the Labour Government, in 1946, as a result of a policy of planned economy. In this case it was a combination of public and private enterprise. This investment programme, started in 1950, has been brought to a successful development and an amount approximating to £9 million or £10 million has been spent on the re-equipping of factories and the provision of factories of the most modern and up-to-date kind.
We talk of fuel efficiency in these days as being of great importance. In the sugar beet factories there is a standard of fuel efficiency which is very high and which industry generally should emulate. That would be helping the economy of the country. May I say, in this connection, that if it is to be said that there is to be no change, then the publication "Change is our Ally" is something which must be read carefully? What the Conservatives are thinking today may well be the policy which the Government will follow in due course. If this industry is destroyed, it can only be because the Government think that a policy of peaceful co-existence is permanent. If they are right. I should have thought there could have been economies in defence expenditure without making economies in this direction. The Bill says that there is to be a quantitative limitation in sugar beet. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary can say whether this quantitative limitation is to be by acreage, tonnage, volume or factory capacity.
I have shown that it is bad for the Commonwealth producers and for the home producers. It is equally bad for the consumers. The Joint Parliamentary Secretary earlier interjected—and other hon. Members opposite have said—that this means no increase in price for the consumer. I think that it does. The Bill makes provision for any deficit incurred by the Sugar Board to be financed by a surcharge on all sugar and molasses coming into the country. When we had subsidies that deficiency was met out of taxation. The deficiencies will not now be met from taxation, but will be

passed on to the consumer. As the working classes are by far the largest in number, and probably consume more sugar than most because of the needs of their children, their cost of living will rise, and there will be further pressure for increases in wages, contributing, in turn, to the present inflationary tendency.
We believe that the Bill strengthens the position of the merchant without any advantage to the consumer. Indeed, the consumer will be worse off. This is a further step by the Government towards restoring liberty of action to the merchants. Earlier, as we know, the Government granted sugar importers open general licences to purchase more sugar for re-export, whether or not it was refined in this country. As the Bill itself shows, we know that import and export controls will still be required—but how many times have we been told that it is the Government's intention to get rid of controls? If that is their intention it nullifies a good deal both of what has been said this afternoon and what appears in this Measure.
During the past year it has been obvious that the Government were determined to abandon State trading in sugar. They followed their usual line of preconceived ideas and doctrinaire policy. The Bill is produced at a time when the Government has been compelled to withdraw the selling of publicly-owned lorries. In fact, it was introduced on the very day on which the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation made that statement. Why, when that has failed, do they come here with another proposition which will also be a failure? In my opinion, the Government are playing up to the vested interests. We have to remember that 1 per cent. of the community still own 50 per cent. of the country's wealth.
This Bill is a further illustration of the Government's determination to hand over the country's well-being to private speculators. In his first Budget speech, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that the country's economy had been deteriorating for the last fifty years. The Government are now giving back all our industry and enterprise to the very people who led us into this sorry mess. This Bill is a step in that direction, and because of that we, on this side, standing for public responsibility and ownership as opposed to vested interest and private speculation, will oppose it.

7.34 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Harmar Nicholls): I agree with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Rochester and Chatham (Mr. Bottomley) that this has been a good debate. Considering the complexities of the Bill, the House has shown a very good grasp of it. I have envied the speedy way in which hon. Members have grasped this subject, because I found it pretty hard going even with all the help of my Department. We never expected unanimity—it is not right that there should be unanimity when new legislation is concerned—but the debate has been conducted without acrimony. There was an odd minute—a brief exchange by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Smethwick (Mr. Gordon Walker)—when hon. Members might have thought that it was a Vinegar Bill and not a Sugar Bill which was the subject of debate. The general tone, however, has been one of which hon. Members on both sides can be proud.
As always, the hon. Gentleman the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. F. Willey) breathed fire on the Bill. He did it rather more gently than usual, but he did breathe fire. His right hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Rochester threw cold water on the Bill. In my experience, when cold water is thrown on a fire the result is steam, which is hot air, which just about sums up the right hon. Gentleman's argument.
I wish, at the very beginning, to refer to the right hon. Gentleman's opening words, because they were really not in character with him—he is held in highest esteem in all parts of the House. His first words, which cast doubt on the impartiality of those who serve on the various boards, were well below his usual level. Generally speaking, we are all proud of the type of man who undertakes this public service—often at very great expense and great trouble. I am certain that the right hon. Gentleman, on consideration, would not like to repeat the charge implicit in his words.
I should also like to take up with him his suggestion that the interests of the Commonwealth are nowadays the monopoly of his right hon. Friends and himself. Neither the Government nor their supporters have anything to fear on that

score. They have a record which brings them right up to date; they have no need to bow to anyone in looking after the Commonwealth producer. I would take him up on his challenge. He said that the party opposite would give a clear indication that they would enter into new agreements. Those are just words.
On behalf of the Government, I can produce actions—which always speak louder than words. When this Commonwealth Sugar Agreement was entered into, the termination date was to be 1959, and there was a Clause by which, annually after 1952, the Agreement could be extended by a year. Every year since we have been in power we have extended the period. It now stands, not at 1959, but at 1962. That is evidence to support my general claim that we have the Commonwealth interests at heart. We have nothing to apologise for in that regard.
The hon. Member for Sunderland, North objected to the suggestion that he had advocated the nationalising of the British Sugar Corporation. I shall, therefore, not go so far as that. He objected to it, and I accept it.

Mr. Willey: Perhaps I could make the position clear. I was advocating the bringing into full public ownership of the Corporation. I told the hon. Lady the Member for Aberdeen, South (Lady Tweedsmuir) that I did not say—because I did not think it came within the scope of our discussion—that the refineries should be brought into public ownership. That matter was not raised in my argument.

Mr. Nicholls: It was because of what the hon. Gentleman said that I was going to use other words. He said that the Bill was a retreat rather than an advance. I think that that sums up his message. The suggestion that we should have more control at the centre is out of date. I can well imagine the hon. Member being able to produce a theoretical argument in support of it twenty years ago, because then we had no practical experience to set against theoretical arguments. We now have twenty years of actual experience. It has been shown that the British Sugar Corporation has worked well and produced the results.
Those results are the answer to the theoretical arguments advanced by the other side that it would have been better


if there had been more control at the centre. Although we expect them to be used in debate, those arguments really lose their force when set against the experience of the last 20 years. It is, I think, common ground between Government and Opposition that the Government of the day must have sufficient powers to ensure that the Corporation performs its functions of buying sugar beet in a way that carries out the Government's obligations under the Agriculture Act. Clause 17 of the Bill makes that very clear. Where we part company with the hon. Member and his views is at the point when they suggest that the best means of ensuring that the Corporation's duties are carried out efficiently is to hand them over to the Government and to give the Government more extensive powers to enable them to intervene directly on all occasions.

Mr. Bence: The Bill does that.

Mr. Nicholls: In our view, statutory powers such as the hon. Member suggests—which are not included in the Bill; it takes a bit of reading, but if they read it carefully hon. Members will find that it includes no such powers—would be a very blunt instrument indeed. From personal experience in business in a small way, I believe that an organisation cannot be made efficient merely by introducing legislation. We have to depend on the abilities and the enterprise of those who run it. Hon. Members opposite recognise that when they appointed the present Chairman of the British Sugar Corporation, Sir Alan Saunders, who has the qualifications which I have suggested must be possessed by anybody running an organisation like this.
Can we believe that the Corporation would be in better shape today if the Government had had power to tell it what to do and what not to do at every turn? Once we have men of the right calibre, it is better to rely not upon statutory powers but upon the normal operation of economic forces. That is happening now and we want it to continue.
Mr. Willey: The Government are repealing the Sugar Industry Act, 1942, and the hon. Member has not directed himself to that at all. Because the British Sugar Corporation is not a full public utility, we have these complex, compli-

cated administrative arrangements to prevent it from doing what otherwise it might do. I am suggesting that we should sweep away those complicated arrangements, make it a full public utility and let the chairman, Sir Alan Saunders, get on with the job.

Mr. Nicholls: The hon. Member said that before, and I understood him perfectly. What I am saying is that, whatever the Corporation is or is not, it is working well and producing the results—and that is the sort of test which we want to apply.
We go further than that and say that if we want it to do better, we should arrange some incentive; let the free working, which exists today, have the added impetus of some incentive schemes behind it. I was surprised to hear the hon. Member belittle the effect of the incentives because later in his speech he described the results which have flowed from them. He outlined the saving of coal, and I agree with him; if every industry had saved as much coal through similar efficiency, one of the national problems of today would be very much smaller. We have seen that man-hours per ton of beet worked have been halved. We are getting the same work in half the time. The daily average of sliced beet has risen in ten years from 31,000 to 41,000 tons. Those are the results about which I am talking. The hon. Member can object to the title and offer all sorts of complex descriptions, but he cannot get behind the fact that the Corporation has produced these results.
Another point which he made and which
should be answered concerned the return which the shareholders get. He made a big point of this and tried to leave the impression that the shareholders were getting rich at the expense of the taxpayer. That does not bear examination at all when we remember that over 19 years the average rate of interest has been 4½ per cent. and that this year for the first time it has risen to 5 per cent. When we compare those figures with the present day value of money and all that has happened in those years, I do not think the hon. Member's charge will bear examination.
Many comments have been made about sugar beet growers, and the leader of the band was the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt). It is true that the


sugar beet growers and the Sugar Corporation are left exactly as they were before the Bill was introduced. I confirm that the price for sugar beet is settled at the Annual Price Review. The Minister also settles the national acreage. At present the national acreage is about 412 acres. [HON. MEMBERS: "412,000."] That is very important to me personally, because one of the leading sugar beet factories is in my constituency and many of the people who keep it supplied are my constituents. If I omit three noughts it may well be that my constituents' supplies will be cut. I am happy to put that right. It should be 412,000.
I can give a satisfactory reply to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) on the question of supplementary payments in years of adverse farming conditions. There was no need for this provision in the Bill because the Sugar Board pays to the British Sugar Corporation a deficiency on revenue account which will always take into account the element of loss due to poor crops. I hope that will satisfy my hon. and gallant Friend, who raised a very important point.
We cannot support the hon. Member for Bolton, West in his antipathy to sugar beet, which does not deserve all the scathing comments which he made about it. My hon. Friends were quite right to produce a very able defence on that score. I suggest to him, as my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. J. E. B. Hill) did, that sugar beet is not as uneconomic as all that. The hon. Member for Bolton, West said that it was completely uneconomic and ought not to be considered, on grounds of cost. In fact, it compares very favourably with the negotiated price of Commonwealth sugar under the Agreement and does not possess all those dark factors which he suggested.
There is nothing to prevent a farmer from growing more sugar beet for animal feedingstuffs or other purposes, but this extra quantity would not attract the guaranteed price nor would it be accepted for making sugar. That is a point which should be borne in mind when explaining to our farmer colleagues the importance of sugar beet in the rotation; there is nothing to stop them from growing extra sugar beet if they

wish as long as it is clearly understood that it is not for sugar and does not attract the guaranteed price.
I repeat that the Bill does nothing but dot the i's and cross the t's for the growers and, in substance, the growers' position and the powers of the Minister are pretty much as they were. The main reason for the Bill is that it will take the buying and selling of sugar out of the hands of the Government machine. I support this personally with great joy, because I do not think that the Government machine is suitable for the purpose. A Government agency may be satisfactory during a period of fixed quantities and fixed prices, where conditions must be rigid, as in war or special times of stringency, but when world supply is more than adequate and the buying and selling occurs in fluctuating markets, which is the position today, then the rigid Government organisation is not flexible enough to meet all the circumstances and there is a grave and expensive risk of being left with uneconomic stocks.
On the positive side, these new arrangements should assist us in our endeavour to recapture the invisible exports of prewar days. The reopening of the London Terminal Sugar Market which flourished before
the war would be a very useful step and there is no reason it should not come back again. The question of the Board and of obtuse language led me to be proud of my commercial training tonight, because when the right hon. Member for Smethwick found the words he read so difficult to understand and made great play of the fact that nobody could understand them, I was proud—

Mr. Gordon Walker: I could understand them.

Mr. Nicholls: The hon. Gentleman did not make his understanding clear to us. The right hon. Member did not make himself clear, but those words were very clear to me. The Board uses its judgment of the position and is in a position to form a judgment because it is watching the market and sells when the price is the best it can get. That is what everyone in commerce does.

Mr. Gordon Walker: The words were perfectly clear to me but their meaning was not. To identify that with a free market is just nonsense.

Mr. Nicholls: The meaning of the words is what they say, that the Board will sell when the market best suits it.

Mr. Willey: Surely the hon. Gentleman is mistaken in saying that the Board can sell when it will. The Board has no power to store or handle sugar, so it has to sell forthwith.

Mr. Nicholls: The Board buys in the country of origin and naturally will sell at the best price, and it has good judgment in being able to do that to the benefit of its accounts. There is no reason to suppose that it would sell at a lower price than it could get. I do not think the House need have any fear of that.
The Bill makes it possible for the London Terminal Sugar Market to reopen whilst at the same time honouring to the full the Commonwealth Agreement on sugar and maintaining the average price, as is the position now. I want to emphasise again, because it has been referred to by so many hon. Members, this Bill will in no way interfere with the price the consumer pays in the shop. At the moment the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food sells according to costs, and that is the price the housewife has to pay. Under this Bill the Board will do precisely the same, and the result as far as the consumer is concerned will be exactly the same. The Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, both as regards price and amount, will remain unaffected.
I think the right hon. Member for Smethwick answered the hon. Member for Sunderland, North in making clear that this Bill was quite distinct from the Commonwealth Agreement, which he pretended to think was in jeopardy because of the Bill. It merely means that the quantity we have contracted to buy under the Agreement will be bought by the Board instead of by the Government.
The other charge made by the hon. Member for Sunderland, North which I think ought
to be answered was a charge against the Tate and Lyle organisation. Some very hard words were said about monopolies, and the name of Tate and Lyle has been bandied about as though Mr. Cube were responsible for all the troubles of the Opposition. I think that is a bit of exaggeration. I think the Opposition has it troubles quite apart from Mr. Cube. No one would deny the pre-eminent part Messrs. Tate and Lyle play in sugar refining in this country,

but we ought to have this quite clear. If the hon. Member will take this point, because the criticism was rather scathing, while Tate and Lyle is an important and pre-eminent name, it is not the only name in the industry. We have names such as Martineau, Sankey and Westburn. In addition, the British Sugar Corporation itself does part of the refining.
I should like to deal with the rather worrying suggestion the hon. Member made that Tate and Lyle had got considerable shareholdings in the Sugar Corporation and would, as a consequence, influence the policy that would come from that Corporation. We ought to have this clear. According to my information, the British Sugar Corporation has five million shares and Messrs. Tate and Lyle has not one of them.

Mr. Willey: Will the hon. Gentleman now answer what I said? I did not mention Tate and Lyle in this connection. The point I was making was that a refining agreement is negotiated between the Corporation and the refiners and it is wrong, in those circumstances, that the refiners should have any holding in the Corporation. If the hon. Gentleman could show me that the refiners have no holding whatever in the British Sugar Corporation, either through the firms or individually, I shall be very much relieved.

Mr. Nicholls: Because the words followed on his criticism of Tate and Lyle, perhaps I got a wrong impression from the hon. Member. I was rather disturbed and found out the position, and, as far as the information I have been able to obtain goes, it is that Tate and Lyle has not one share. It may well be that represents the position of the refiners generally.
I think those are the general points which have been made in this debate. There have been many other points which I think will lend themselves for further discussion in Committee. The hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. J. Johnson) made a point about membership of the Board. That is a question which I have no doubt he will raise again in Committee. In passing, I should have thought it would have been a bad thing to have as members of the Board, whether in this country or in the Commonwealth, people who have a special interest in the work the Board is to carry out. I should have thought that it would have been better—but of course the decision will be the


decision of the Government—to have had as members of the Board people who are impartial and who would view their decisions objectively in a way in which people who were interested in its work could not view them. I have no doubt that the hon. Member, who is very tenacious on these matters—I always admire him for his tenacity—will raise that matter in Committee and we shall be able to give a more detailed explanation than I can give now.
The last point with which I wish to deal is that which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South. I may say at once that it is quite possible for any area to get supplies from another area if it is prepared to pay the extra transport charge. There is not likely to be any alteration of that under the Bill. The development to which my hon. Friend referred and the problem which is being faced do not arise out of anything

in the Bill or in the existing sugar refining agreement. I think I can give my hon. Friend some satisfaction when I tell her that the Committee concerned has promised us that it will give very full attention to this matter, and I have no doubt it will be able to find a solution to the area problem which she raised.

I am quite certain that when hon. Members have had a chance of reading the Bill and the White Paper, as well as having had the advantage of this debate, they will come to the conclusion to which I have come, which I commend to the House, that by this Bill we are safeguarding our Commonwealth Agreement, safeguarding our sugar beet producers and consumers and in this way getting more life into the actual dealing in sugar.

Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time:—

The House divided Ayes 193, Noes 132.

Division No. 38.]
AYES
[7.58 p.m.


Agnew, Cmdr. P. G.
Crouch, R. F.
Howard, Hon. Greville (St. Ives)


Aitken, W. T.
Cunningham, Knox
Howard, John (Test)


Allan, R. A. (Paddington, S.)
Dance, J. C. G.
Hudson, Sir Austin (Lewisham, N.)


Alport, C. J. M.
Davidson, Viscountess
Hughes Hallett, Vice-Admiral J.


Amery, Julian (Preston, N.)
D'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Hughes-Young, M. H. C.


Amory, Rt. Hn. Heathcoat (Tiverton)
Deedes, W. F.
Hulbert, Sir Norman


Anstruther-Gray, Major W. J.
Dodds-Parker, A. D.
Hutchison, Sir Ian Clark (E'b'gh, W.)


Arbuthnot, John
Drayson, G. B.
Irvine. Bryant Godman (Rye)


Armstrong, C. W.
Eccles, Rt. Hon. Sir D. M.
Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)


Ashton, H.
Eden, J. B. (Bournemouth, West)
Jennings, J. C. (Burton)


Atkins, H. E.
Elliot, Rt. Hon. W. E.
Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)


Baldock, Lt. Cmdr. J. M.
Errington, Sir Eric
Johnson, Erie (Blackley)


Baldwin, A. E.
Farey-Jones, F. W.
Johnson-Hicks, Hon. L. W.


Balniel, Lord
Fell, A.
Keegan, D.


Barber, Anthony
Finlay, Graeme
Kerby, Capt. H. B.


Barter, John
Fisher, Nigel
Kershaw, J. A.


Baxter, Sir Beverley
Fleetwood-Hesketh, R. F.
Kirk, P. M.


Beamish, Maj. Tufton
Fletcher-Cooke, C.
Lagden, G. W.


Bell, Philip (Bolton, E.)
Fraser, Sir Ian (M'cmbe &amp; Lonsdale)
Leburn, W. G.


Bell, Ronald (Bucks, S.)
Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.
Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.


Bidgood, a. C.
Garner-Evans, E. H.
Legh, Hon. Peter (Petersfield)


Birch, Rt. Hon. Nigel
Gomme-Duncan, Col. A.
Lennox-Boyd, Rt. Hon. A. T.


Bishop, F. P.
Gower, H. R.
Lindsay, Hon. James (Devon, N.)


Black, C. W.
Graham, Sir Fergus
Linstead, Sir H. N.


Body, R. F.
Grant, w. (Woodside)
Lloyd, Maj. Sir Guy (Renfrew, E.)


Bossom, Sir A. C.
Grant-Ferris, Wg Cdr. R. (Nantwich)
Lloyd, Rt. Hon. Selwyn (Wirral)


Boyle, Sir Edward
Green, A.
Longden, Gilbert


Braithwaite, Sir Albert (Harrow, W.)
Gresham Cooke, R.
Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh


Brooke, Rt. Hon. Henry
Grimston, Hon. John (St. Albans)
McAdden, S. J.


Browne, J. Nixon (Craigton)
Grimston, Sir Robert (Westbury)
Macdonald, Sir Peter


Bryan, p.
Gurden, Harold
Mackie, J. H. (Calloway)


Buchan-Hepburn, Rt. Hon. P. G. T.
Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)
Maclay, Rt. Hon. John




McLean, Neil (Inverness)


Burden, F. F. A.
Harris, Reader (Heston)
Macmillan, Maurice (Halifax)


Butcher, Sir Herbert
Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)
Macpherson, Niall (Dumfries)


Campbell, Sir David
Harvey, Air Cdre. A. V. (Macclesfd)
Maddan, Martin


Carr, Robert
Harvey, John (Walthamstow, E.)
Marlowe, A. A. H.


Cary, Sir Robert
Hay, John
Marples, A. E.


Channon, H.
Heath, Edward
Mathew, R.


Chichester-Clark, R.
Hicks-Beach, Maj. W. W.
Mawby, R. L.


Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmth, w.)
Hill, John (S. Norfolk)
Maydon, Lt.-Comdr. S. L. C.


Cooper, Sqn. Ldr. Albert
Hinchingbrooke, Viscount
Moore, Sir Thomas


Cordeaux, Lt.-Col. J. K.
Hirst, Geoffrey
Morrison, John (Salisbury)


Corfield, Capt. F. V.
Holland-Martin, C. J.
Nairn, D. L. S.


Craddock, Beresford (Spelthorne)
Hope, Lord John
Neave, Airey


Crookshank, Capt. Rt. Hn. H. F. C.
Hornsby-Smith, Mist M. P.
Nicholls, Harmar


Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.
Horsbrugh, Rt. Hon. Dame Florence
Nugent, G. R. H.




Oakshott, H. D.
Robinson, Sir Roland (Blackpool, S.)
Thomas, Rt. Hon. J. P. L. (Hereford)


O'Neill, Hon. Phelim (Co. Antrim, N.)
Roper, Sir Harold
Thomas, P. J. M. (Conway)


Orr-Ewing, Charles Ian (Hendon, N.)
Ropner, Col. Sir Leonard
Thompson, Lt.-Cdr. R. (Croydon, S.)


Page, R. G.
Sharples, Maj. R. C.
Thornton-Kemsley, C. N.


Pannell, N. A. (Kirkdale)
Shepherd, William
Tiley, A. (Bradford, W.)


Partridge, E.
Smithers, Peter (Winchester)
Touche, Sir Gordon


Pickthorn, K. W. M.
Smyth, Brig. J. G. (Norwood)
Turner, H. F. L.


Pilkington, Capt. R. A.
Speir, R. M.
Tweedsmuir, Lady


Pitt, Miss E. M.
Spens, Rt. Hn. Sir P. (Kens'gt'n. S.)
Vosper, D. F.


Pott, H. P.
Stanley, Capt. Hon. Richard
Wall, Major Patrick


Powell, J. Enoch
Stevens, Geoffrey
Waterhouse, Capt. Rt. Hon. C.


Price, David (Eastleigh)
Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)
Willliams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)


Raikes, Sir Victor
Steward, Sir William (Woolwich, W.)
Williams, R. Dudley (Exeter)


Ramsden, J. E.
Stewart, Henderson (Fife, E.)
Wood, Hon. R.


Rees-Davies, W. R.
Storey, S.
Woollam, John Victor


Remnant, Hon. P.
Summers, G. S. (Aylesbury)
Yates, William (The Wrekin)


Renton, D. L. M.
Sumner, W. D. M. (Orpington)



Ridsdale, J. E.
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Rippon, A. G. F.
Teeling, W.
Mr. Wills and Mr. E. Wakefield.




NOES


Ainsley, J. W.
Hannan, W.
Palmer, A. M. F.


Albu, A. H.
Hastings, S.
Parker, J.


Allen, Arthur (Bosworth)
Hayman, F. H.
Paton, J.


Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)
Healey, Denis
Pearson, A.


Bacon, Miss Alice
Herbison, Miss M.
Peart, T. F.


Bence, C. R. (Dunbartonshire, E.)
Holt, A. F.
Popplewell, E.


Benson, G.
Howell, Denis (All Saints)
Proctor, W. T.


Beswick, F.
Hubbard, T. F.
Pryde, D. J.


Bevan, Rt. Hon. A. (Ebbw vale)
Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)
Rankin, John


Blackburn, F.
Hunter, A. E.
Reeves, J.


Blenkinsop, A.
Hynd, H. (Accrington)
Roberts, Rt. Hon. A.


Blyton, W. R.
Hynd, J. B. (Attercliffe)
Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)


Bottomley, Rt. Hon. A. G.
Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)
Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)


Bowden, H. W. (Leicester, S. W.)
Irving, S. (Dartford)
Ross, William


Bowen, E. R. (Cardigan)
Janner, B.
Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.


Bowles, F. G.
Jeger, George (Goole)
Short, E. W.


Boyd, T. C.
Johnson, James (Rugby)
Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)


Brockway, A. F.
Jones, Rt. Hon. A. Creech(Wakefield)
Skeffington, A. M.


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.
Jones, David (The Hartlepools)
Slater, Mrs. H. (Stoke, N.)


Brown, Thomas (Ince)
Jones, Elwyn (W. Ham, S.)
Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)


Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)
Jones, Jack (Rotherham)
Sorensen, R. W.


Callaghan, L. J.
Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.
Sparks, J. A.


Champion, A. J.
King, Dr. H. M.
Steele, T.


Chapman, W. D.
Lawson, G. M.
Stones, W. (Consett)


Chetwynd, G. R.
Ledger, R. J.
Summerskill, Rt. Hon. E.


Clunie, J.
Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)
Taylor, John (West Lothian)


Collick, P. H. (Birkenhead)
Lever, Leslie (Ardwick)
Thomson, George (Dundee, E.)


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Lindgren, G. S.
Tomney, F.


Cove, W. C.
Lipton, Lt.-Col, M.
Viant, S. P.


Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
McInnes, J.
Warbey, W. N.


Cronin, J. D.
McKay, John (Wallsend)
Weitzman, D.


Daines, P.
McLeavy, Frank
Wells, Percy (Faversham)


Deer, G.
Mann, Mrs. Jean
Wheeldon, W. E.


Dye, S.
Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.




Mikardo, Ian
White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)


Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)
Mitchison, G. R.
Wilcock, Group Capt. C. A. B.


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Moody, A. S.
Wilkins, W. A.


Evans, Albert (Islington, S. W.)
Morris, Percy (Swansea, W.)
Willey, Frederick


Evans, Edward (Lowestoft)
Morrison, Rt. Hn. Herbert (Lewis' m, S.)
Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)


Forman, J. C.
Moyle, A.
Williams, W. T. (Barons Court)


Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)
Mulley, F. W.
Willis, E. G. (Edinburgh, E.)


Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. H. T. N.
O'Brien, T.
Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)


Gordon Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.
Oliver, G. H.



Grey, C. F.
Oram, A. E.
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)
Oswald, T.
Mr. Holmes and Mr. J. T. Price.


Hamilton, W. W.
Owen, W. J.



Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Select Committee of Seven Members, Four to be nominated by the House and Three by the Committee of Selection:

Any Petitions against the Bill presented by being deposited in the Private Bill Office at any time not later than the fifth day after this day in which the Petitioners pray to be heard by themselves, their

Counsel or Agents, to stand referred to the Committee, but that if no such Petition is presented, or if all such Petitions are withdrawn before the meeting of the Committee, the Order for the committal of the Bill to a Select Committee to be discharged and the Bill to be committed to a Standing Committee:

Any Petitioner whose Petition stands referred to the Committee, subject to the Rules and Orders of the House


and to the prayer of his Petition, to be entitled to be heard by himself, his Counsel or Agents, upon his Petition provided that such Petition is prepared and signed in conformity with the Rules and Orders of the House, and the Member in charge of the Bill to be entitled to be heard by his Counsel or Agents in favour of the Bill against such Petition:

Power to report from day to day Minutes of Evidence:

Three to be the Quorum of the Committee.—[Mr. Amory.]

SUGAR [MONEY]

Considered in Committee under Standing Order No. 84 (Money Committees)—[Queen's Recommendation signified.]

[Sir RHYS HOPKIN MORRIS in the Chair.]

Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to provide for the establishment of a Sugar Board, and to make further provision as respects the British Sugar Corporation Limited, and for other related purposes, it is expedient to authorise—

(a) the issue out of the Consolidated Fund of sums required to enable advances to be paid under the said Act to the Sugar Board established thereunder, being either—

(i) advances, of which the principal amount outstanding at any time shall not exceed twenty-five million pounds, for meeting outgoings of the said Board, or
(ii) advances, of which the principal amount outstanding at any time shall not exceed thirty million pounds, for enabling the said Board to make advances to the British Sugar Corporation Limited;
(b) the issue out of the Consolidated Fund of sums paid into the Exchequer under the said Act, being repayments of, or interest on, sums advanced thereunder to the said Board, and the application of those sums in redeeming or repaying debt or (in so far as they represent interest) towards meeting such part of the annual charges for the National Debt as represents interest;
(c) the issue out of the Consolidated Fund of sums required by the Treasury under the said Act for fulfilling guarantees in respect of debentures issued by the said Corporation of an aggregate principal amount not exceeding an amount sufficient to raise fifteen million pounds;
(d) the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any administrative expenses

under the said Act of the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food or the Commissioners of Customs and Excise, or of any other Minister of the Crown or Government department.—[Mr. Amory.]

Resolution to be reported upon Monday next.

WAYS AND MEANS

Considered in Committee.

[Sir RHYS HOPKIN MORRIS in the Chair.]

SUGAR

Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to provide for the establishment of a Sugar Board, and for other related purposes, it is expedient—

(a) to authorise the levying, in the United Kingdom and in the Isle of Man, of a surcharge on sugar and molasses becoming chargeable with customs or excise duty, and on sugar or molasses used in the manufacture or preparation of imported goods which become so chargeable;
(b) to authorise the levying as aforesaid of sums to be paid to the Sugar Board established under the said Act, as counterparts to distribution payments to be made by that Board in respect of such sugar and molasses as are mentioned in the preceding paragraph in the event of a suspension of the surcharge referred to in that paragraph;
(c) to provide for the raising of money by the Treasury, in any manner in which they are authorised to raise money under the National Loans Act, 1939, for the purpose of providing sums (or any part of sums) to be issued out of the Consolidated Fund by virtue of the said Act or of providing for the replacement of all or any part of sums so issued;
(d) to provide for the payment into the Exchequer of any sums required by the said Act to be so paid, being—

(i) interest on, or repayments of, sums advanced to the said Board, or
(ii) sums retained by the Commissioners of Customs and Excise, out of the proceeds of the said surcharge, in respect of their expenses incurred in pursuance of the said Act, or
(iii) repayments of sums issued to the Treasury for the purpose of fulfilling guarantees given under the said Act.—[Mr. H. Brooke.]

Resolution to be reported.

Report to be received upon Monday next; Committee to sit again Tomorrow.

RURAL WATER SUPPLIES AND SEWERAGE [MONEY]

Resolution reported,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to increase the limit on the contributions out of moneys provided by Parliament which may be made under section one of the Rural Water Supplies and Sewerage Act. 1944, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys so provided of any increase attributable to the provisions of the said Act of the present Session in the sums payable out of such moneys under the said section one, under Part I of the Local Government Act, 1948, or under the Local Government (Financial Provisions) (Scotland) Act, 1954.

RURAL WATER SUPPLIES AND SEWERAGE BILL

Considered in Committee; reported, without Amendment.

8.13 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. J. Nixon Browne): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
The Bill itself has met with general approval. In so far as hon. Members have been critical they have in the main, criticised the Act, passed earlier this year, which introduced the system of payment by instalments. Several hon. Members have urged that the provision of piped water and sewerage in country districts should proceed faster. They have described conditions in areas where these services are still lacking. One has every sympathy with people living in such areas, but we must weigh their particular interest with the interest of the country as a whole. If our productive resources are overstrained, then, of course, no one will benefit in the long run.
Without the Bill the allocation of Exchequer grant would very soon have to stop, because the limit permissible under existing legislation will soon have been reached. On this ground I confidently commend the Bill to the House.

8.15 p.m.

Mr. Sidney Dye: During the debate on Second Reading I raised one or two important matters about the administration of rural water and sewerage schemes in the past, and the

Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government was good enough to say that he had noted what I had had to say but that that was hardly the time to reply. I wonder whether he has given consideration in the meantime to some of those matters and has something to say on Third Reading about them.
One of the matters to which I drew attention was the decrease in the proportion of the grant which the Ministry is now giving to both rural water supplies and to sewerage schemes. I am very concerned about this matter, because not merely is there a decrease in the percentage grant towards the capital cost but, as we all know, there is an increased capital cost because of the higher rate of interest now being charged on the loan.
I take, for example, some schemes which are still under discussion, the work on which is in some cases proceeding, but about which there have been discussions with the Ministry about the amount of grant. They are in my own constituency. I mention them only for an example. For instance, in the three purely agricultural villages of Colkirk, Milcham and Swanton Morley, when there was the first discussion between the Ministry and the rural district council, the offer of grant was about 33⅓ per cent. That is what the hon. Gentleman said the average was throughout the country. In the discussions which have now gone on, the Ministry, on the basis of the figures for which tenders have been received—and the total cost of the three schemes is about £21,000—offers a grant of £330 a year, which would be equal to 27 per cent. on the capital cost; but if the rate of interest on the loan is 5 per cent., then the grant represents only 24 per cent. of the capital cost.
What I want to know is this. Is this as isolated instance? These are purely agricultural villages. Or is there a tendency, with the increased cost of these schemes, for the Government to pay a smaller proportion and to place a bigger proportion on the ratepayers? I can mention other examples also in my constituency, but in another rural district, namely, Swaffham, the percentage grant in 1952 in the case of Ickburgh was 46 per cent. and at Cockley Cley 39 per cent., but in 1955 the proportion of the grant represents only 14 per cent. of the


capital cost in the case of Great Cressingham.
What I have said applies to water schemes. In relation to sewerage schemes there is the same law of diminishing grant from the Government. Whereas in 1954 for two schemes the percentage grant was 46⅔ per cent. at Mundford, and 43 per cent. at Sporle, at Great Cressingham in 1955 it is only 17 per cent. and at Weeting in 1955 it is 23 per cent. If it is the policy of the Government to stretch out their grants in a thinner layer over the country and to place a larger burden upon the local authorities, it is unfair, not only because of the rising actual cost, but also because of the greater cost due to the increased rates of interest.
I also put the point to the hon. Gentleman whether we were going about rural sewerage schemes in the right way, bringing the greatest possible advantage to the greatest number, or whether the engineers were basing their projects on rather extravagant ideas. I also drew attention to the fact that, in connection with civil defence, there was need to get these schemes going in those areas which were designed to receive evacuees in the event of hostilities. These are important matters to us who have to try to carry the burden of local as well as national government.
If the Minister's argument is that in the past these authorities have been given higher percentage grants and that that is a reason for giving them lower grants now, it will obviously discourage authorities from carrying out schemes. Before giving the Bill a Third Reading, the House should know more clearly what the Government's intentions are in relation to present economies. The House should know whether it is the intention of the Government to make these schemes so costly to the rural ratepayers that they will be disinclined to put them forward and that there will be a slowing down in providing water for the country areas and dealing with sewerage schemes.
We must face this matter now, because of the difficulty that villages which are
without these amenities cannot compete for labour with those that have them. Throughout Norfolk there is a very strong feeling that if we are to retain in the

country districts the people who are there now, quite apart from being in a position to receive evacuees in a time of war, we must increase rather than decrease the number of schemes. There is a feeling that the matter is as urgent now as it has ever been and that local authorities should have a clear statement from the Government of their intentions, both with regard to the schemes that are brought forward and the amount of financial aid which the Government will provide for them. I hope that, before we give the Bill a Third Reading, the Minister will be able to give us a better assurance than he was able to do on the previous occasion when we discussed the Bill.

8.25 p.m.

Mr. Cyril Bence: After some consultation with the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, I discovered that it is rather unfortunate that the Bill covers England and Scotland, because it would appear that what is a rural area in England and Wales is very often an urban area in Scotland. In my constituency, in the rural area which we call the landward area, there is a very difficult sewerage problem, but that area is not covered by the provisions of the Bill because it is a rural area which has been described as a Development Area. We have some very serious water supply problems in the villages of Croy, Twechar and Cumbernauld.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Rhys Hopkin Morris): I understood the hon. Member to say that those areas do not come within the provisions of the Bill. I must remind him that on Third Reading we can discuss only what is in the Bill.

Mr. Bence: I had not mentioned Kirkintilloch, which I cannot describe as covered by the Bill, because it happens to be a small borough, but these villages in the landward areas are rural villages. They are miles away from Kirkintilloch. I cannot discuss sewerage schemes and the failure to obtain grants from the Treasury and so on in relation to a borough, but I submit that I am in order in discussing the water supply problem in the rural area.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The hon. Member is in order in discussing what is in the Bill, and nothing else, on Third Reading.

Mr. Bence: This is a rural area and the Bill provides grants for the supply of water in rural areas. We are very short of water in this rural area. I hope that as a result of the Bill we shall have speedy action in providing for rural areas a share of the proposed extra £10 million. We want to increase the water pressure in the villages in the landward area, which I hope will be treated as a rural area. It is now three years since we first tried to obtain grants to improve the water supply. Since this Measure was presented on 21st July, new borrowing terms have been announced, and it seems to me now that the £10 million set aside for Scotland will have been considerably reduced in value, perhaps to £7,500,000. If a sum of £10 million was required in July, it seems to me that as a result of Government policy there should now be a re-assessment of the need and we should have another Bill in February.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Mr. Deputy-Speakerrose—

Mr. Bence: I appreciate, Sir, that I am liable to be out of order when speaking on the Third Reading. I do not think I have ever done so before. I know that the sum of £10 million cannot be in- creased now, but there is nothing in this Bill to the effect that we may have another Bill—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The hon. Gentle- man must confine his remarks to what is in the Bill.

Mr. Bence: Very well, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I hope I have put the case for the County of Dunbartonshire, and I am sorry to have to make a plea to the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, because it may be that somebody else in Scotland will have to go short if we are to get justice for our rural areas in East Dunbartonshire.

8.28 p.m.

Mr. F. H. Hayman: I rise to ask the Parliamentary Secretary if he will tell us whether his right hon. Friend has formed any estimate of the rate of the expenditure which he anticipates will be made under the Bill over the next few years. The Government have decided that local authorities are to be asked to restrict their capital expenditure next year to what it was in 1954–55, so it would seem that the amount available next year under this Bill will be less than it has been this year.
Every county council is considering carefully its capital programme for next year, and we are seeing constantly in our local newspapers reports of cuts that are being foreshadowed. Therefore, I view with apprehension the progress of rural water supplies and sewerage schemes over the next few years, particularly next year, and especially in my own constituency, where there are vital schemes which ought to be carried out at once.
The Bill is designed to raise the existing limits of total capital values of the contributions but, according to the new policy of the Government introduced earlier this year, it will carry with it a burden of £37 million as interest. Whereas, under the old policy of the Minister, the £40 million which the Government paid was the sum and substance of it, now the £40 million really involves £77 million. It is a disastrous policy. It is a complete waste of the country's money at a time when the Chancellor is asking everyone to economise, and I fear that the rural localities will suffer seriously in their water supplies and sewerage schemes.

8.32 p.m.

Mr. Thomas Steele: First, I should like to say to my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) that were it not for the rainfall in West Dunbartonshire, East Dunbartonshire would not have the water it has at present.

Mr. Bence: It would be dry.

Mr. Steele: I wish to draw the attention of the Minister, as I did the other evening on another Bill, to the point made so admirably by my hon. Friends the Members for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Dye) and Falmouth and Camborne (Mr. Hayman). This Bill had its Second Reading on 25th October and the next day we had the speech from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in which he set out some proposals of the Government. Reading the speech of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government with that in mind, it is clear that he himself had some indication of what was to come, because at that time he was careful in his remarks. He said:
there are many schemes upon which local authorities are anxious to embark, but which we cannot authorise.


And, of course, he emphasised the great need there was for this work to be done.
The hon. Gentleman the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland said, in the same debate:
We shall have to see how we go, but this extra £10 million will allow us to approve schemes in theory. …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th October, 1955; Vol. 545, cc. 104–129.]
If that is the intention of the Government, once again we are in the dilemma of the Government coming forward with legislation to spend money, on the one hand, and then telling the local authorities, on the other, that they have to cut their coat according to their cloth.
What is to happen? The Chancellor made his statement on 26th October. The Government have had plenty of opportunity to consider exactly what is to be done and what effect this will have. Can we have an assurance from the Minister that the Government will press ahead and ensure that schemes will be approved and that the money made available under the Bill will be spent?

8.35 p.m.

Mr. Thomas Fraser: I should like to bring the speeches from the Opposition to an end by saying that we are very concerned about whether the provision of rural water supplies and sewerage schemes will continue unhindered by some recent declarations.
On 25th October, when we returned after the long Summer Recess, we had the Second Reading of the Bill, and we were invited
by the Ministers who spoke in the debate to accept the Bill. After all, it was providing another £40 million for schemes which it was hoped, so the Ministers said, would be carried through during the next five years. Perhaps it is hardly right to put it that way. I will put it that they hoped that schemes would be carried through during the next five years which would gobble up some £40 million of Government grant to the local authorities who would be carrying through the schemes.
We got the impression from time to time during the course of the speeches that the increasing rate at which the schemes have been coming forward would be maintained. In the early years after the war the schemes did not come forward at the rate the Government desired, but later they came too quickly. During

the last few years the number of schemes submitted has increased and the total value has risen considerably. On 25th October, we got the impression that it was the Government's hope and intention that the progress would be maintained.
On 26th October, the Chancellor had another statement to make to us. In the concluding words of my speech on Second Reading, I said I hoped that the Government would give every encouragement to local authorities in rural areas to provide not only water supplies but sewerage schemes, and that the Ministers concerned would do their utmost to prevail upon the Chancellor, irrespective of the economies that he would feel obliged to impose very soon, to ensure that there was no slowing up in the provision of water supplies and sewerage schemes. I thought that, judging by their gesticulations, Ministers were accepting the advice I was then giving. HANSARD, of course, does not record such gesticulations, and the Ministers were very careful not to say anything which would commit them too deeply.
However, the following day, 26th October, the Ministers who have their names to this Bill sent a letter to the same local authorities telling them that their estimates for work to be done in the year 1956–57 should not exceed the estimates for the work which they did in the year 1954–55. When one has regard to the way in which costs have risen between 1954–55 and 1956–57, one appreciates that local authorities are being invited to do less work.
I would merely say to the Ministers that I hope that the circular does not mean that less work will be done in this sphere. It is terribly difficult to believe that, though our balance of payments problems are serious, and as a nation we may be living beyond our resources, we shall get out of our difficulties by cutting down on the provision of rural water supplies and sewerage schemes. People living in urban areas take their piped water supplies, sewerage schemes and modern sanitation for granted, and at a time when we should do everything we can to encourage people to live in the countryside and continue with the production of food, we ought not readily to discontinue the good work which has been going on in recent years in providing these modern amenities for the countryside.
I would like the Parliamentary Secretary to assure us that he and his right hon. and hon. Friends will do their utmost to see that there is no serious slowing up of the work of providing water supplies and sewerage schemes in the rural areas, and that, so far as he knows and has reason to believe, the five-year period which he mentioned in his speech and is mentioned in the memorandum to the Bill is still the period the Government have in mind. That will mean that in another five years or less it will be necessary for us to look at this matter again.
Let him also tell us that the letter sent out on 26th October means not that the Government think that the five years should be six or seven years, but that the Government will do their utmost to encourage the maintenance of the progress that has been made in recent years.

8.41 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. W. F. Deedes): Our deliberations on the Bill have been interrupted by the Budget. Our discussion of the Second Reading took place one day before the Budget, and now that we are on the Third Reading it is natural that hon. Gentlemen should raise the relationship of the Bill to what has been said by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Before I refer to that subject, I would deal with the point of local concern raised by the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence). He asked about the rural schemes in his own area—I know he will not hold against me my non-Scottish accent of his local place names. I am informed that the existing village of Cumbernauld is one of the areas to be served by the regional water scheme of the Dunbartonshire County Council, and that grants for the scheme have already been promised. Croy and Twechar are to be similarly served, and will benefit just as Cumbernauld.
I turn to the general points raised by the hon. Members for Falmouth and Camborne (Mr. Hayman), Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Dye) and Hamilton, about the future of grants for water and sewerage

in rural areas. I can be reassuring. It is true that local authorities have been asked not to allow their total capital expenditure in 1956–57 to exceed their expenditure for 1954–55, but the total value of the grant-aided rural water and sewerage schemes in 1954–55 was £14 million, or £3 million less than we have in mind from April, 1955, to April, 1956. The matter rests finally with local authorities to decide how they wish to bring their expenditure to that level.
My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in his Budget statement that this principle must apply to all fields of local government expenditure, and that the Government were leaving it to the authorities to decide, in the light of their conditions, which of their various capital projects could be delayed with the least damage to the standards of their services. Many local authorities, particularly in rural areas, may conclude that their water and sewerage schemes are of first priority and should get more than they got in 1954–55. We shall certainly not stand in their way.
The sum of £17 million is the provisional sum for total expenditure in the current year ending 1st April, 1956. More than half of that year has now passed, and schemes of over the £17 million have been authorised. We have examined the situation, and I can say that my right hon. Friend is satisfied that the balance of £17 million is likely to be absorbed by schemes which are so badly needed that they ought to be allowed to proceed even in the present situation. Therefore, the figure of £17 million still stands for the current year, which is the year we are discussing.

Mr. Hayman: If there is an unspent balance of the £17 million authorised for this year, must that unspent balance be part of the capital expenditure permitted for 1956–57?

Mr. Deedes: I think that I can assure the hon. Gentleman that there is not likely to be an unspent balance. The difficulty is fitting requests into the programme, not the other way round.
For next year—1956–57—it simply is not possible to say what the programme will be. This has no relationship to the Budget or the current financial policy. The estimates will be settled by the


normal machinery for consideration of Departmental estimates, and the House has an opportunity of discussing those estimates before the figure finally goes through.
In a number of cases where schemes cannot be authorised this year, we have said that they will be authorised next year. Those promises will be honoured, provided that in each case the local authority, after considering the message which is received, thinks it right to proceed. I hope that on this particular point and the total sum involved, the hon. Gentleman will agree that, for the current year, I have said as much as I reasonably can.
May I add one word about the capital sum involved? There was, I think, some misunderstanding by the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East. It is important that this should be appreciated. The figure of £40 million in the Bill is a capital figure. Although the grants are being paid by instalments, and, as the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne said, the total sum involved will be just over £77 million, only the capital element counts against the £40 million provided in the Bill, and the change in the rate of interest which has affected the figure, of £77·7 million, has no bearing on the capital sum which this House is about to pass for rural water schemes. That capital sum remains intact.
The hon. Member for Norfolk, South-West raised a number of points on Second Reading, and I thought that it might be for his convenience if I answered the bulk of them in a longish letter which he will be receiving from me shortly. He has, however, raised two major points tonight, and I will deal with them as briefly as I can. The first was the question of the rate of the grant. I know that he appreciates that the rate of grant is not fixed; it is ad hoc. It is considered individually in each area which requests a grant, and therefore too much should not be made of what one area may be getting in relation to another.
We have discussed this before and there is no secret about the circumstances which we take into account—the finances of the local authority, the size of the scheme, the population which it has to serve, and so on. After that, the rate of the grant is decided. He is right in saying that it

averages about one-third, to which the county council adds one-third, but it may well be a small percentage lower or higher.
I think that it is fair to say that the rate poundages of the rural areas of Norfolk, which is a fact which we take into account, are by no means as high as in many other areas, and that is a factor which has some bearing on the amount that the local authority would get.

Mr. Dye: Surely the rate poundage has some relation also to the various services which are provided in the area, and if an area is without some services which are a charge on the rate, it looks as if the grant for the water schemes could be lower.

Mr. Deedes: I do not want the hon. Gentleman to misunderstand. The rate poundage is one factor to be taken into account in deciding what the percentage should be. There are rural areas of Norfolk in which the rate poundage is not as high as it is in certain other areas, and possibly that accounts for the fact that they do not get as much as they feel they should have.
On the whole the system works well. The causes for individual complaint are few. I hope that the hon. Member will bear in mind the point I have made on the expenditure of the capital sum, in answer to the main question he asked, which was whether it would be necessary to reduce the sum. He then raised the question of sewerage and engineers permitting rather grandiose schemes. It is one of the functions of the Ministry, when schemes are submitted, to make sure that there is no extravagance. Seeking the Ministry's approval is not always regarded as an unmixed blessing. It has the advantage that if there is a grandiose scheme it gets trimmed before it is sent back with our approval. If we were asked to approve a proposal for deep-laid sewers, in order to prevent pumping, we should want figures to show that the method selected was really the cheapest. That is an example of the sort of thing we should do.
On the question of Civil Defence, I should like to take the opportunity which the hon. Gentleman has given me to correct something I said during the Second Reading debate on the question which he raised about evacuation. The


need for preparing for evacuation is one of the factors which we take into account, in considering how much work can be authorised from time to time in the country as a whole. I was wrong, though, when I said that we take this into account when considering the scale of particular schemes. Because much work remains to be done and our resources are not unlimited, our aim is to get piped water and sewerage provided as widely as possible. But, as a matter of common prudence, all schemes are designed to be capable of meeting substantially larger demands than is expected immediately. That is common sense.
Perhaps I should add, for I know that this is a point which concerns the hon. Member, that Departments concerned with evacuation and other aspects of Civil Defence are constantly in touch with each other about water supply and facilities which would be needed in the reception areas. The fact that there is no standing committee on the subject does not mean that there are no discussions about that.
I hope that I have managed to give the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) the general assurances which he sought, and that I have given to the hon. Member for Norfolk, South-West the particular assurances that he wished to have.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

WOMEN'S ROYAL ARMY CORPS (MRS. PATRICIA HORTON)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Barber.]

8.54 p.m.

Mr. Hugh Gaitskell: It is, I realise, somewhat unusual for those of us who sit on the Opposition Front Bench to raise matters during the half-hour Adjournment debate. To avoid any possible misunderstanding I hasten to explain that I do so as a private Member and on behalf of one of my constituents. This is a sad, indeed a tragic, case of a young woman, Mrs. Patricia Horton, who died of acute leukaemia within a fortnight of being discharged from the Women's Royal Army Corps.
I think it will be best if I tell the story of the last part of her life as I have heard it from her sister, so that the Under-Secretary will know exactly what is in my mind. Mrs. Horton—she was then unmarried and her name was Whitehead—joined the Women's Royal Army Corps about two years ago. I think she was about 17½. She was due for discharge in August of this year. Until the summer, there is no record of anything being wrong with her. She certainly did not suspect it, and the Army authorities equally had no reason to suppose that she was not perfectly fit and healthy.
However, at the beginning of July she volunteered, as she had done before, as a blood donor, and, of course, as a result she subjected herself to a blood test. The persons concerned, when they took the test, told her that they did not wish to have her as a blood donor. They also gave her a letter to take to her medical officer about her condition which, I understand, they diagnosed from the blood count as anaemia.
Mrs. Horton went to her medical officer and gave him the letter. Apparently, he did not take any further blood test, nor, so far as I can make out, conduct any detailed examination. He gave her some iron tablets, which, I believe, is a common method of treating anaemia, and she went on with her work. However, according to her sister's story, she was continually sick. She fainted at work and she returned to the sick quarters on several


occasions. The medical officer, discovering from this that the tablets he had originally given to her obviously disagreed with her, gave her some others. But, so far as I have been able to ascertain, apart from a week in the sick bay, she continued at work, though on light duties, right up to the moment of her discharge early in August.
I understand that there have been some reports, which I think appeared in the newspapers when this case was reported, that she had refused all medical treatment. I am assured that this is not so and that, certainly throughout July, she was, as I have said, going to the medical officer, but not, so her sister felt, receiving any proper attention. It seems clear that throughout the whole of this period no specialist advice was sought and no further examination made. The assumption seems to have been that she was suffering from anæmia; that it was not serious and that no further action was called for on behalf of the Army authorities. Yet again, according to her sister, during these six weeks she lost no less than three stones in weight, so that she must have been looking ill by the end of it.
On 8th August, Mrs. Horton went for her medical examination immediately prior to demobilisation and only then, according to my information, did the medical officer say that she was seriously ill and that she ought to be in hospital. Even then he did not alter his previous diagnosis that she was anæmic, but merely thought that she was not responding to the treatment very well.
Mrs. Horton refused to go to hospital at that point, not because she did not realise that she was ill but, again according to my information, because she felt that she had not really had any adequate treatment from the medical officer there, and because, since she was to be demobilised in a few days, it was obviously sensible to wait and see her own civilian doctor. It is also true that she did not want to go to hospital because she was intending to get married and that would have meant putting off the wedding. Accordingly, as I say, she did refuse the suggestion that was then made—but had not been made earlier—that she should go to hospital for proper treatment.
A curious feature of this case is that after this examination she was given the medical category which she had held during her period of service when she was perfectly fit, the medical category F.E., or fit for general service. I am bound to say I find that very difficult to understand. Two days later, she wrote to her sister saying that she was very ill and that they would get a shock when they saw her, because she had lost so much weight.
Mrs. Horton left the Service. She got married. She reached home on 18th August—ten days after the medical examination. Her husband was also in the Regular Army. This young married couple came to stay with Mrs. Horton's sister in Leeds, in my constituency. By the time she got to her sister's home, Mrs. Horton was unable to walk—her husband actually had to carry her upstairs. Naturally, they sent immediately for her own doctor, who immediately ordered her to hospital. She died ten days later of acute leukæmia.
I must ask the Under-Secretary of State a number of questions about this case which, as I know he will understand, has caused her relatives a very great deal of distress. It is, as I have said, a tragic one. My questions are these. Were the Army authorities—or the medical officer—themselves aware of the nature of her illness? Why was she not sent to hospital as soon as she came back from the blood test—or, at least, why was she not given more care and attention? How was it that they allowed her to continue with light work?
How was it that this went on, according to her sister's story, even though she was losing weight very quickly indeed? Why was no specialist called in? If the medical officer had any doubt about the matter, or was worried that, perhaps, he had not diagnosed correctly, would it not have been possible to get some other advice? Finally, why was she graded fit for general service when she was obviously desperately ill?
The relatives, and indeed people generally, are entitled to answers to those questions. This case attracted a good deal of publicity shortly after she died, because there was, of course, an inquest, and comments were made at that inquest. I hope, therefore, that to satisfy her relatives—and if I may say so, in a sense


the reputation of the Army is involved—the Minister will be able to give satisfactory answers to my questions.

9.4 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for War (Mr. Fitzroy Maclean): I should like, first, to say that I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Gaitskell) for raising this case, because I hope that it will give me an opportunity to clear up these tragic events. I think that it would be useful if I started by giving our version of the facts, which does not, I think, differ to any very great extent from that given by the right hon. Gentleman, but which does differ in several matters of reference.
As the right hon. Gentleman said, Private Whitehead, as she then was, joined the Women's Royal Army Corps in February, 1954, and her health remained good until July of this year. I should like to add that she was an unusually keen and unusually promising member of her corps.
On 11th July she volunteered as a blood donor, and a blood test was then taken. This blood test, which was taken by the National Blood Transfusion Service, was a different type of blood test from that which would have been necessary to diagnose leukaemia. They took a blood test for their own purposes, which seemed to reveal that she was suffering from anaemia. The National Blood Transfusion Service therefore gave her some iron tablets, which were the normal treatment for anaemia, and advised her to see a doctor. At the same time, they informed the unit medical officer, who was a civilian, of the conclusion which they had reached. When the unit medical officer received their letter, he instructed Private Whitehead to report sick. The move, I think, came from him and not from her; she did not make the first move.
She duly reported sick on 19th July. After she had seen the medical officer, he decided to continue the iron treatment and to keep her under observation. During the following week—from 19th to 26th July—she suffered from minor upsets of a gastric nature which were compatible with difficulty in assimilating the medicine she had been given. Accordingly, the treatment was slightly modified and slightly different medicine was given to

her. On 26th July, the new treatment being continued, she was put on light duties.
The next development was on 8th August. At that time she had been treated for anaemia, which, after all, is quite a usual and not very serious disease, since 19th July, and since 26th July she had been on light duties. On 8th August, she reported to the medical officer for a release medical examination prior to leaving the Army to get married.
The medical officer carried out the usual release medical examination, which is a thorough medical examination, and found her condition normal in every respect—that is to say, her heart and lungs were quite normal—but he found her very anaemic. There had, I think, not been a very sharp deterioration at that stage—in fact there had been some signs that she was yielding to treatment—but her condition was still very far from satisfactory. There were some signs that she was yielding to treatment, but it could not possibly be said that the medicine had produced the desired results.
Accordingly, when he saw this, the doctor told Private Whitehead that she appeared to be very anaemic, that her condition was not satisfactory and that the medicine had not produced the desired results, and he advised her as strongly as he could to go into hospital for full investigation. This she declined to do on two grounds—first, that she was shortly getting married and, secondly, that she felt perfectly well. "Perfectly well" are the words which she used, and although she did not sign a written statement refusing to go into hospital, she said that she was feeling perfectly well and said it in front of a witness.
I have explained that the doctor was a civilian medical officer. He was a youngish man, but a man who had had experience both as a doctor in the Royal Army Medical Corps—he had been decorated for gallantry while serving as a doctor in Korea—and for three or four years in his present appointment. All he could do was to make her promise that when she had been released from the Army, as she would be on marriage, she would at once consult her civilian doctor.
Private Whitehead, before her discharge, was also interviewed again in the presence of a witness—by her company commander, who was in possession of the


medical officer's report, and who also asked her very strongly to postpone her marriage and go into hospital. Once again she refused to do that and insisted on going ahead with her plans. It might be suggested that the company commander and the medical officer should have overridden her objections, but one has to remember two things. One has to remember, first, that—for reasons which are perfectly understandable—she had deliberately minimised her symptoms. She had used the expression that she felt perfectly well. The second thing to remember is that in order to diagnose a blood disease it is necessary to take a sample of blood. In order to take a sample of blood, it is necessary to perform what, technically, is an operation. An operation requires the consent of the patient. That she was not prepared to give.
It would have been possible to refuse to discharge her from the Army and to order her to go into hospital, but even if she had gone into hospital—which we know she was reluctant to do—it would still have been impossible to take the necessary blood sample for the purpose of diagnosing leukaemia without her consent.
The rest of this tragic story is that Private Whitehead was duly married on 13th August. She took her discharge from the Army, as she was entitled to do, on 16th August. On 18th August she was admitted to Leeds General Infirmary as an emergency case and, on 28th August, she died of acute leukaemia which, as the right hon. Member knows, is an incurable disease, and which, in this case, any amount of treatment could only have produced the result of prolonging her life by a few weeks, or possibly a few months.
The right hon. Member has asked why it was that she was discharged from the Army as category F.E., which is "fit for service everywhere." The reasons for that are as follows. The medical officer gave her her release examination on 8th August, which was the last occasion on which he saw her, and there was no evidence available to him on what he could see that she was suffering from anything more serious than anaemia.
Here I should make an observation which really requires a technical expert,

but I hope to make myself clear. In cases of acute leukæmia, there is a change in the internal condition of the blood. I understand that that change takes place so rapidly that it does not produce a corresponding change in the organs of the body until the process of deterioration is very far advanced—and then a sudden deterioration of the organs takes place. Therefore, when the medical officer examined Private Whitehead on 8th August no evidence was available to him—and unless she had first gone into hospital for observation and had had a blood test, no evidence could have been available to him—of anything more serious than anæmia.
Again, I would recall that Private Whitehead—Mrs. Horton—had deliberately minimised her symptoms and had stated on 8th August that she felt perfectly well. That being so, as the medical officer had no evidence of anything worse than anæmia, he was not able to change her medical category. Her health had been perfectly satisfactory until then, and she was therefore classed as F.E.—"fit for duty everywhere." He would have been able to change her category only if she had consented to go into hospital and blood tests had been taken which showed leukæmia, and a medical board had then sat and reported upon her case. That had not happened, and the medical officer had no option but to leave her category as it was, qualifying it by saying that she was suffering from anæmia.
Having heard our version of the facts, I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will agree that no blame attaches to the Army authorities or to the medical officer in this case. In fact, no blame attaches to anyone. I should like to take this opportunity of extending my sincere sympathy to Mrs. Horton's husband and other relatives in their tragic loss.

Mr. Gaitskell: I wish I could say that I thought the Minister's answer satisfactory, but with the best will in the world I simply cannot. He spent a good deal of his time in dealing with what happened on and after 8th August, which was the day when she was examined. I should like to ask two further questions. First, was the doctor who examined her not aware of the extent to which Mrs. Horton had lost weight? I do not deny that she did not wish to go to hospital, but the story I have heard is that she did


not wish to go because she felt she was not getting adequate treatment there and would get far better treatment from her own civil doctor at home. Surely the medical officer must have weighed her in the course of his examination. If so, he could have compared her weight then with her weight when he examined her early in July.
Secondly, I am frankly astonished that the Under-Secretary can defend what appears to be a practice in the Army, namely, to grade somebody as fit for general service at the very same moment that it tells that person that he or she is seriously ill and ought to go to hospital. Is chronic anaemia such a mild disease that one who suffers from it is, nevertheless, supposed to be fit for general service?
I do not think that the Under-Secretary answered my other questions. It seems to me that the more serious error arose after the original blood test. When Mrs. Horton went to see her medical officer he took no further test. She was then still in the Army and, presumably, could have been sent to hospital. I can hardly imagine that at that stage there would have been any difficulty about undergoing this so-called operation.

Mr. Speaker: With every desire to assist the right hon. Gentleman, I must point out to him that he is putting me in a difficult position because he is making what amounts to a second speech. I was quite prepared to allow a question or two, but in the interests of order I must insist upon the rule of one speech to one Motion.

Mr. Gaitskell: Yes, Mr. Speaker. As I am speaking on behalf of the relatives I am, naturally, anxious to get the full facts, and I was but pressing the same questions I had previously asked, which had not been answered by the hon. Gentleman. However, I will leave it at that. If the hon. Gentleman will answer those questions about the period between 11th July and 8th August, and the other two questions, I think we may make some progress.

Mr. Maclean: Let me deal with the question of the category in which Private Whitehead was placed. The system by which a soldier remains in a category until a full investigation by a medical board has been held on his condition and

has reported is a perfectly rational one. Indeed, it is the only possible one.
I think the right hon. Gentleman will agree that this was an exceptional case, of a girl anxious to get married, who said she felt perfectly well, and who refused to go into hospital. As I have said, it would have been possible to have refused to discharge her for some further weeks and to have kept her in hospital, and to have refused to allow her to get married, but I think we might have been somewhat severely criticised if we had done so in the circumstances.
We have to remember also that she did not appear to be suffering from anything worse than anaemia, and that the doctor's report on her condition on 8th August did not show any serious deterioration. Nor at that date had she suffered such a very serious loss in weight. She had not been weighed since she entered the Army in February, 1954. She was weighed again on her release. I will cause that point to be further investigated, but my information is that there was not such very serious loss of weight at that time. However, I will confirm that and write to the right hon. Gentleman.
The right hon. Gentleman has asked why no blood test was taken earlier. That would be between 19th July and 8th August. The medical officer had no reason to suspect that she had anything except anaemia at that time. A blood test had been taken by
the Blood Transfusion Service, which, as I have said, was not the same blood test which would have shown leukaemia. It was a test of quantity of blood rather than quality of blood. As he had to deal with a patient who was deliberately minimising her symptoms, I do not think that the doctor was to blame for not diagnosing leukaemia at that stage, or even on 8th August.
I am assured that it is possible for a patient to be suffering from leukaemia without the symptoms being apparent, unless a blood test specifically designed to diagnose leukaemia is made. If the right hon. Gentleman still feels that there are other points which he would like me to look into, I shall be very glad to investigate the matter further. I feel that in what was a very difficult case both medically and psychologically the unit medical officer did everything that it was his responsibility to do.

9.25 p.m.

Mr. Thomas Steele: We have all listened with care to what my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Gaitskell) said and to the Minister's reply, but I feel that the Minister has not answered the questions which my right hon. Friend put to him, and I am shocked at some of his statements. There is surely something wrong with a system which permits a medical officer to give a certificate of fitness to a woman in these circumstances, declaring she is fit for service anywhere, while at the same time and in the same place she is told that she is seriously ill and ought to enter hospital. We cannot be satisfied with that situation, whatever the Minister may say. If that is the general practice, surely it should be investigated.
According to my right hon. Friend—and the Minister did not deny it—there is evidence in a letter which this woman sent to her sister, indicating that her sister would be shocked at her appearance. That quite clearly shows that she herself knew there was something wrong.

Mr. Gaitskell: Two days after the medical examination.

Mr. Steele: The woman herself evidently knew that there was something seriously wrong which would shock her sister. Therefore, the medical officer would have been able to see for himself what the woman was like. The Minister appeared to suggest that there was no evidence, but if a young, healthy woman loses two or three stones in weight rapidly and is herself concerned about what her sister thinks when she arrives, surely, with all due respect to the medical profession, any doctor from his knowledge and experience should be able to see that there is something wrong.
I am not satisfied about the blood test. The Minister indicated that there was need for an operation, I suppose a minor one, but we should have some idea of what that means. The Minister rather indicated that the operation would require the consent of the person concerned, but surely there is something wrong there. What kind of blood test was involved? I am a layman, but I have had blood tests, and they did not take long. If the medical officer was so

concerned, he could have arranged for this test to be made. In any case, when the Blood Transfusion Service indicated the position to the medical officer, I think it called for more consideration than was given. There are features about this case which are very unsatisfactory, which have not been cleared up by the speech of the Minister tonight.

9.31 p.m.

Mr. J. T. Price: Like my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, West (Mr. Steele), I share the apprehensions that have been expressed as the result of the statements we have heard from the Box. The Minister has made a bald and unconvincing statement which does not bear much examination. There is only one point I want to comment upon, his reference to the blood test, when in reply to the queries of my right hon. Friend he told the House that it was conducted not for the purpose of defining the quality of the blood but merely in order to ascertain the quantity—

Mr. Maclean: For the Blood Transfusion Service.

Mr. Price: Precisely, for the Blood Transfusion Service. But this is a revolutionary explanation of how blood tests are taken for that service, and I am certain that the professional men interested in this question will be astonished to hear that this is the purpose of a blood test taken for the Blood Transfusion Service. I have always understood that it is to ascertain the category of blood before it is put into the blood bank for use on different patients of different types.
Surely some account is taken of the number of corpuscles in the blood? The one outstanding symptom of leukaemia is that the white corpuscles multiply at a much greater rate in relation to the red corpuscles which form the body of the blood. Surely any check of the blood stream of this poor woman taken by a competent doctor, who put it into the laboratory and had it examined by a pathologist, or whoever was to do the job, would immediately show the unbalance between the white and red corpuscles?
This ought to be pursued. The obvious objective symptoms of loss of weight, of unsatisfactory blood and, later on, of


vomiting and debility, ought to have indicated to any reasonably competent medical man who conducted these examinations that this girl was not fit to be certified fit for general duties. I understand that there is an old saying in the Army, medicine and duty—M. and D.—and that outlook of the Army ought to be one which the hon. Gentleman with his own gallant experience, if I may say so, in the late war ought to be very zealous in his office as Minister of the Crown to correct if he has the power to do so.

Mr. Speaker: It would have been more convenient if the speeches of the hon. Members for Dunbartonshire, West (Mr. Steele) and Westhoughton (Mr. J. T. Price) had been made before the Minister replied. It puts me in a difficult position, but if the Minister wishes to say a few words, and has the leave of the House, I will permit him to conclude.

9.34 p.m.

Mr. Maclean: Thank you, Sir. Perhaps I may clear up one or two of the points that have been raised.
First, the question of weight. Mrs. Horton was weighed on 5th March, 1954, that is, immediately after entering the Womens Royal Army Corps. She then weighed 133 lb. She was weighed again on 8th August, 1955, when she weighed 123 lb. She had, therefore, lost exactly 10 lb. during that period. Those are the only figures that we have. I do not think there is really any evidence to support the suggestion that she lost three or four stone. Our records show that during the whole of her service in the Army—admittedly, there may have been fluctuations—from the beginning to the end, she lost 10 lb. I would add that anaemia would have been enough to account for a loss of that extent.
On the question of the exact nature of the blood test to which Mrs. Horton was subjected by the National Blood
Transfusion Service, it is not really for me to say exactly what sort of test it was. First of all, I am not technically qualified, and, secondly, it would be for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health to discuss that further. Therefore, I confine myself to saying that it was a test designed simply to tell whether or not the donor was suitable for giving blood. It was not a test designed to show from exactly

what disease she was suffering. However, on the test, as it was, the doctor of the National Blood Transfusion Service and the medical officer were, I am advised, perfectly justified in concluding that what she was suffering from was anaemia.
As to Mrs. Horton's appearance, I would say, first, that the medical officer, as we know, was dissatisfied with her condition and recommended her very strongly to go to hospital and have a full investigation, which she was not able to have, which she declined to have, and which he did not force her to have. It is quite clear that he was not satisfied with her appearance, but I would also say that in the last stage of leukemia the deterioration in appearance and in health generally, when it comes, is very sharp, terrifyingly sharp and sudden. Therefore, it is possible—in fact, it is certain—that between 8th August when the medical officer saw her and nearly a week later when her sister saw her after she had been discharged—I think she went to Leeds on 16th August—the deterioration must have been very sharp and sudden, and that, I think, would account to some extent for the shock which Mrs. Horton's appearance gave her sister.
The right hon. Gentleman said that Mrs. Horton herself said that she had written to her sister telling her that she did not feel well. We know that she did not feel well, and she could not possibly have felt well in the state she was in, but, equally, she would not have felt well if she had been suffering from anaemia and if the anaemia from which she was suffering was not responding to treatment.
Against that, as far as the medical officer is concerned, it was really impossible for him to ignore completely, first, Mrs. Horton's statement that she felt perfectly well, and, secondly, the fact that she did not wish to go into hospital, a refusal which she maintained even when more strongly urged by her company commander that she should postpone her marriage and go into hospital. The tragedy in this case is that she must have known that she was ill. If she had not known it, the medical officer was there to tell her, but she ignored that, and she preferred—and who is to criticise her for her choice in this matter?—to get married and leave the Army rather than go into hospital.
In the face of that attitude, it would be wrong to criticise the medical officer for the decision that he took. He did his best to persuade her, and got the company commander to do the same, not to leave the Service.

9.40 p.m.

Mr. Thomas Fraser: I do not want to make a speech and cause the Minister to seek leave once again to make yet another reply, but I feel obliged to make a comment. The hon. Gentleman has rendered great service to the British Army in the past as a high-ranking officer. Most of us who have listened to the debate will now go home feeling that the hon. Gentleman has rendered a great dis-service to the Army by what he has said. Most of us will be convinced that adequate care was not taken to diagnose the condition from which this woman was suffering between 11th July and 8th August.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food might say that his hon. Friend is not responsible for that, but the Under-Secretary has rendered a disservice by not recognising that there was inadequate care during that period, and in defending the medical authorities in whose care the woman was during that period.
The Under-Secretary of State is sending us home tonight with the knowledge and the belief, and with his assurances, that it is the normal practice for a person having a medical examination in the Army to get a certificate issued by the unit medical officer saying that that person is fit for service anywhere in the world, although in the opinion of that same unit medical officer the person ought to be in hospital. That is why he has rendered a great disservice to the Army and has shaken and scared us all.
It would have been far better if the hon. Gentleman had responded to the instinct that he must have had by admitting that perhaps—suppose that he did not go any farther than that—the medical officer had taken inadequate

precautions to ascertain the girl's condition between 11th July and 8th August, What he said about going to hospital and there having a blood test was quite beside the point because the suggestion was made on 8th August, when the woman was already on her way out of the Army. I wish the Minister had not been so desperately anxious to—

Mr. Maclean: The medical officer had to try to treat her for the disease from which she appeared, not only to him but to the National Blood Transfusion Service, to be suffering. It was only natural that he should try, as he did, first one medical treatment and then another medical treatment, and that he should give himself and his patient time to see how she responded to that treatment. She reported sick only on the 19th July, and it was not much over a fortnight later that she was discharged. By then he had had time to come to the conclusion that she was not, in fact, responding to treatment. But he had to give the treatment a chance first.

Mr. Fraser: I think that the blood test, such as it was, was on 11th July. Most of us have had the kind of blood test that one gets when one offers a pint of blood to the Blood Transfusion Service. It seems to me that the Minister might have admitted that possibly the medical officer was at fault in accepting a blood test which was carried through for quite another purpose. He might have, if he had thought that it was probably anaemia, sought to find out for himself by taking a blood test some time on or after the 19th July.
Let the Minister think again about the shock which he has given the House in assuring us that it was perfectly normal for this woman, on her discharge from the Service, to be given a certificate saying that she was fit for service anywhere, when the medical officer issuing the certificate strongly advised her to go into hospital.

Adjourned accordingly at fourteen minutes to Ten o'clock.